ABSTRACT
Technology licensing and in-house R&D are viewed in this chapter as the ‘buy or make’ decisions. Whilst technology licensing is strictly concerned with trade in technology, it is also usually the basis of a wider technological collaboration, which underpins broader alliances between organizations (Lowe and Crawford, 1984; Lowe and Atkins, 1991). However, the extent to which firms see the internal and external acquisition of knowledge as alternatives and the extent to which they are complementary strategies seem to vary across industries and by type of firm. Lowe and Atkins (1991), for instance, found a close correlation between firms purchasing and selling technology, whilst most research studies have identified the technology and industry specific nature of licensing markets (Teece, 1977; Atuahene-Gima and Patterson, 1993).
