The contingent value of initial collaborations for the establishment of later autonomous operations

This study examine why some firms that are operating in an area of business through collaborations eventually become independent whereas others continue to collaborate. Using data on the aircraft industry, we show that experience with collaboration alone is insufficient to allow firms that were formerly in collaborations to establish autonomous operations. Collaborative experience needs to be partner-specific, gathered in contexts involving low levels of causal ambiguity, and fairly recent to help former partner firms obtain the resources required to establish autonomous operations. We then discuss how our study contributes to the interorganizational learning literature.