Linda Rademaker

Friedmann, Jens-Christian; Lavie, Dovev, Rademaker, Linda & Shipilov, Andrew V. (2025)

The Hidden Battle for IP Protection in Alliances

MIT Sloan Management Review, 66(3), s. 35- 41.

Strategic alliances are indispensable for accessing specialized resources, capabilities, and know-how that companies cannot easily develop in-house. However, despite being critical for innovation, alliances can be fraught with distrust, particularly regarding concerns about losing intellectual property (IP). A telling case is the failed alliance between American Superconductor Corp. (AMSC) and wind turbine producer Sinovel. AMSC provided essential software for Sinovel's turbines, but Sinovel reverse engineered the software to introduce its new turbines without AMSC. In another recent case, sportscar maker Saleen Automotive accused its joint venture partner of filing 510 patents based on proprietary Saleen technologies and trade secrets worth $800 million, without crediting Saleen's inventors. These cases illustrate how alliances can turn into IP battles, with grave consequences for companies that fall prey to predatory partners. Such battles are more common than may be apparent to external observers, since they rarely receive publicity. Our research reveals that at least 50% of alliances encounter traceable knowledge spillover, and our interviews with executives suggest that this is a key concern in most strategic alliances.

Friedmann, Jens-Christian; Lavie, Dovev & Rademaker, Linda (2024)

Does the Predator Become the Prey? Knowledge Spillover and Protection in Alliances

Journal of Management, 30(4) Doi: 10.1177/01492063241262741

Does a firm that successfully absorbs knowledge from an alliance partner learn to protect its own knowledge in subsequent alliances? Our analysis of 529 alliances of East Asian firms during 1999–2015 suggests that as firms more skillfully overcome their partners’ knowledge protection, they learn to better protect their own knowledge in subsequent alliances. However, such vicarious learning increases at a diminishing rate and is further weakened by the firm’s relative absorptive capacity and the value chain scope of the previous alliance. Our study extends research on learning in alliances by demonstrating cross-alliance dynamics and by revealing conditions under which absorbing knowledge from previous partners helps a firm protect its own knowledge in subsequent alliances.

Grøgaard, Birgitte; Sartor, Michael A. & Rademaker, Linda (2022)

What merits greater scholarly attention in international business?

Journal of International Business Studies, s. 1508- 1518. Doi: 10.1057/s41267-022-00539-1 - Full text in research archive

Scholarly efforts to propose future directions for international business (IB) research have generated a timely and extensive inventory of potentially interesting areas of research. We supplement this line of inquiry by suggesting that an additional layer of scrutiny could be beneficial when advocating in favor of giving more attention to particular research realms. Specifically, we advance several guiding principles that will help IB scholars assess which research areas merit greater scholarly attention, based on their potential importance and impact. We distinguish between (1) research in new or underdeveloped research domains, where salience, urgency, and actionability are critical elements, and (2) new research in relatively well-established domains, where scholars may contribute to changing the theoretical conversations taking place in IB.

Kolbjørnsrud, Vegard & Rademaker, Cecilia H. Alijda (2019)

Automation and location choice in international operations

[Academic lecture]. Frontiers in International Business 2019.

Kolbjørnsrud, Vegard & Rademaker, Cecilia H. Alijda (2019)

Automation and location choice in international operations

[Academic lecture]. Strategic Management Society Annual Meeting.