Abstract

This paper investigates the patenting activities of firms in the imaging sector by constructing its so called "technology space" as platform of bundled knowledge that presents incentives for strategic collaboration. We identify the relative centrality of firms to make inferences about their organizational status to account for their propensity to engage in strategic alliances. The status system is derived from five year windows of organizational networks through mutual citation of intellectual capital (i.e. patents) that we construe as an evolving technology space, and allows a determination of the flow (as distinct from stock) of status to predict their propensity to engage in strategic alliances. Higher status firms, afflicted with loss aversion exhibit lower while firms with established knowledge legacy exhibit higher alliance propensity. We also consider the firms' degree of knowledge diversity, their inclusion in the technology space relative to overall R & D output as complements to status, spatially defined. The implications of the findings are reviewed through the lens of technological evolution and dominant design.