Jasper Brinkerink

Jasper is a PhD candidate at Maastricht University’s School of Business and Economics, located in the south of the Netherlands. He received his B.Sc degree in International Business and an M.Sc degree in Business Research from the same institution.

For his dissertation research, he studies how family-run businesses manage to compete with more resource abundant firms. In this specific project, Jasper wants to expose how, conditional on an identified need for collaborating in the New Product Development (NPD) process, family and nonfamily firms select their NPD partner.

All else equal, family firms should seek to partner with those businesses that show the biggest potential for building a sustainable relationship, that signal the best understanding of the idiosyncrasies of the family firm’s organizational culture and governance systems and that can be managed successfully using the family firm’s social capital.

After reviewing the literature on NPD collaboration and conducting some additional focus group discussions, Jasper identified a set of 10 recurring criteria considered in the NPD partner selection process. Based on his developed (resource based) theoretical framework, family firms should attach relatively more weight to those selection criteria reflecting the potential relational fit between the two firms and to criteria signaling the risk of encountering opportunistic behavior from the side of the potential partner. Although the direct utility of the complementary resources needed to complete the NPD process will also be important to family firms, aspects of relational fit and inter-partner trust should receive relatively more attention in the selection of a partner.

Sawtooth’s ACBC survey methodology allows for the assessment of the relative importance of these criteria for family businesses and other firms. Jasper will collect responses from executives of family and nonfamily businesses in the Dutch manufacturing sector. With the anticipated findings of his research he wants to contribute to the literature on strategic management, and innovation management. Furthermore, the family business field will benefit from a more nuanced understanding of the family firm as a complex system of resources. Specifically, the proposed study will add a dynamic perspective, as it aims to show on which basis (social capital) resources are added.