ABSTRACT
Learning allows a firm to generate new knowledge about markets, technologies, processes, product and service concepts, and business models. Firms engaged in learning alliances must protect themselves from unwanted knowledge leakage. This situation presents firms with a specific challenge: to strike a balance between learning and knowledge protection. The chapter discusses this challenge in detail, and focuses on mechanisms that stimulate or hinder learning and knowledge protection, and associate the governance of learning alliances with the alliance development framework. Managing learning alliances requires firms to understand the mechanisms that facilitate interfirm learning and knowledge protection. The literature has emphasized the importance of relative absorptive capacity, governance form, alliance contracts, relational capital, knowledge characteristics, knowledge practices and the role that staff involved in the alliance play in these efforts. The chapter concludes with a summary and a case illustration.
