Innovation in services through learning in a joint venture

Abstract

Innovation determines a firm's competitiveness and survival and a joint venture is a fast and effective way to acquire the missing knowledge that partners require to innovate, but ‘knowing how to cooperate’ can be a determining factor in achieving the successful transfer of knowledge. Employing a sample of 81 service-sector firms and using a structural equation modeling methodology, we found a positive and direct impact between the cooperative learning process and partners' commitment to innovation.

Keywords:

• innovation
• cooperative learning
• knowledge
• commitment
• trust
• joint venture

Acknowledgement

This study received financial support from University of Valencia (Spain), reference UV-AE-10-24387.

Notes

When at least one of the partners is based outside of the country where the JV operates, or when a significant amount of its operations is carried out in another country, it is considered to be an international JV (Kale et al., 1989).

We found empirical studies on cooperation and learning where the sample size was similar to this study. These were published works in journals such as the Strategic Management Journal and included studies by Kale et al. (2002) using 78 firms, Colombo (2003) 67 firms, Lane et al. (2001) 78 JVs and Lane and Lubatkin (1998) 69 firms.