Protecting intellectual capital in international alliances

Many firms have found that the benefits of interorganizational cooperation may be outweighed by costs arising from unintended leaks in product or process technology, market insight, and other knowledge-based assets to the alliance partner. Successful alliance management involves a process of designing, staffing, and monitoring the collaborative interface to balance the requirements for learning and information sharing with protection of intellectual capital. This work describes a framework for assessing and implementing this process.