Strategic alliances as conditioners of technological capacity development: five cases from the Brazilian electro-electronics sector

Intense competition has influenced firms to strength investments in strategic alliances worldwide in order to build up technological capability. In the case of Brazil, pressure to open markets and the internationalization of the competition has led companies to seek alternative forms of accelerating technological development. The aim of this paper is to look into how Brazilian companies manage to increase their technological capabilities by examining the factors that make them internationally competitive. In order to achieve this, three types of factors are analyzed: (1) intra-firm factors; (2) inter-firm strategic alliances; (3) factors that are external to the firm at five companies operating in the Brazilian electronics industry. We conclude that strategic alliances can speed up the technological capability development of firms possessing an initial absorptive capacity. Not all the people interviewed are of the same opinion as to how external factors, such as market characteristics and public policies, influence the development of technological capacity, and it is therefore not possible to reach a definite conclusion concerning a possible association with the other two factors. Future research should take a closer look at external factors in order to understand them better