Joint Venture
A joint venture is a strategic alliance in which two or more firms create a legally independent company to share some of their resources and capabilities to develop a competitive advantage. Joint ventures, which are often formed to improve firms’ abilities to compete in uncertain competitive environments, are effective in establishing long-term relationships and in transferring tacit knowledge. Because it can’t be codified, tacit, or implied, knowledge is learned through experiences such as those taking place when people from partner firms work together in a joint venture.
A nonequity strategic alliance is an alliance in which two or more firms develop a contractual relationship to share some of their unique resources and capabilities to create a competitive advantage. In this type of alliance, firms do not establish a separate independent company and therefore do not take equity positions. For this reason, nonequity strategic alliances are less formal and demand fewer partner commitments than do joint ventures and equity strategic alliances.
