JOURNAL OF MARKETING DEVELOPMENT AND COMPETITIVENESS
The Experts, Explorers and Brokers: How Do U.S. Venture Capitalists Choose
Partners When They Expand into Europe?
Author(s): Dmitry Khanin, Kristie Ogilvie
Citation: Dmitry Khanin, Kristie Ogilvie, (2011) "The Experts, Explorers and Brokers: How Do U.S. Venture Capitalists Choose Partners When They Expand into Europe?" Vol. 5, Iss. 2, pp. 11 - 28
Article Type: Research paper
Publisher: North American Business Press
Abstract:
We contrast the two dominant logics of alliance formation and partner selection: embeddednessaffiliation
and unembeddedness-innovation, and posit that new entrants may follow one of these two
logics depending on the level of market vs. firm uncertainty. Our analysis of U.S. venture capitalist firms’
entry into Europe during the period of the 1980s –2000s shows that the resulting network exhibited both
the logic of embeddedness-affiliation practiced by VC firms acting as experts and the logic of
unembeddedness- innovation practiced by VC firms acting as explorers. Finally, we contend that VCs
acting as brokers helped increase the efficacy of information exchange by linking the experts and
explorers into a more cohesive network.