Oilon

Abstract

Oilon, an European firm with an industrial marketing portfolio of business-to-bush ness products and services, has evolved over four decades of value creation under three generations of top managers and leaders. The company is typical of high technology firms in small open economies facing an internationalization imperative. Until recently, such companies tended to limit themselves to serving neighbouring or developed country markets through collaborative forms of business but reached other markets such as India mainly through exports. They also did not consider companies in developing countries as technology partners or competitors. In the case of Oilon, despite global dominance in industrial burner technologies in Nordic Europe, limits to growth were reached first in Nordic Europe and then in the EU markets. The company could finance further innovation only if its improved designs could be techno- commercially justified through redesigned applications that were not part of its core businesses. Global manufacturers of such applications were also capable of backward integrations. Thus, the novelty of its high technology edge and trajectory depended on developing capabilities to compete or to collaborate with a foreign partner, in this case an Indian or a Chinese company. How does Oilon choose between competition and collaboration in such complex international value chains? The problems and issues that Oilon is grappling with puts to test some of the raging debates in the strategy and international business literature about alliances.