Value Creation in Alliance Ecosystems: Insights from Marketing

As companies mature in their alliance management approaches, collaboration follows suit. From classic strategic alliances to contemporary self-adjusting ecosystems, collaboration today is increasingly characterized by a large number and diversity of partners, long time horizons, joint strategy development based on shared visions, the pursuit of common interests rather than just self-interests, shared leadership and mutual adjustment, and an increasing focus on the (end) customer or a service-dominant logic. This chapter starts by examining this evolution of collaboration from strategic alliances to portfolios to networks and finally to alliance ecosystems. Additionally, this chapter aggregates insights from the research fields of both strategic alliances and marketing to gain a better understanding of the alliance ecosystem and its value for all parties involved (including the end customer as well as society at large). Based on the strategic alliance literature, we provide an overview of the factors determining value creation of ecosystems from a firm-based perspective. Given ecosystems’ increasing focus on end customers, we explore the marketing literature for additional insights on the potential value of alliance ecosystems from the customer’s perspective. The chapter concludes by putting forward five propositions for future research on alliance ecosystems based on our combined insights from strategic alliances and marketing.