臺大管理論叢 NTU Management Review VOL.29 NO.1

103 NTU Management Review Vol. 29 No. 1 Apr. 2019 advance their technologies through collaboration to enhance their competencies. Under this motive of technology acquisition, firms seeking for R&D collaboration may put foci on obtaining the technologies that they do not own or are complementary to their existing competencies. The acquired technologies will not be limited to any specific markets but will be treated as the upgrades and expansion of the technological reservoirs of firms. 2.2 Learning Strategy As Rothaermel and Deeds (2004) highlight, “R” (Research) and “D” (Development) in the research and development process need to be distinguished for realizing their intrinsic effects on firms’ decisions. Hong, Heikkinen, and Blomqvist (2010), based on the extant research in the R&D collaboration, categorize firms’ learning strategies into two: (1) knowledge exploitation , i.e., codification strategy, emphasizing the application of firms’ existing knowledge; (2) knowledge exploration , i.e., personalization strategy, emphasizing the knowledge creation through interfirm collaboration; the former strategy correlates with “D” and the latter with “R”. March (1991) depicts the competition for scarce resources between the exploration and exploitation, the polar opposites of the organizational learning. Therefore, this study follows the extant literature and defines exploration and exploitation as the two learning strategies of firms. The exploratory learning is about learning from generating new knowledge that is diffusing, variant, and distant from the existing knowledge base (Brady and Davies, 2004; McGrath, 2001; Schildt, Maula, and Keil, 2005; Huang, 2010). Cohen and Levinthal (1990) posit that exploration involves basic research, invention, risk-taking, and new capabilities building. March (1991) suggests exploration as the “experimentation with new alternatives” which returns are “uncertain, distant, and often negative”. Levinthal and March (1993) contend that exploration is the ‘pursuit of knowledge, of things that might come to be known’. Rothaermel and Deeds (2004) suggest that the precursor to exploration is simply “the desire, the wish to discover something new”. In contrast, the exploitative learning is about learning from generating knowledge that is mainly based on the existing knowledge base with limited and incremental variance (Brady and Davies, 2004; McGrath, 2001; Schildt et al., 2005; Huang, 2010). March (1991) suggests exploitation as the “refinement and extension of existing competencies, technologies, and paradigms” that implies its economic returns to be more “positive, proximate, and predictable”. Levinthal and March (1993) depict that exploitation is the “use and development of things already known”. Rothaermel and Deeds (2004) suggest