Abstract
Nanotechnology is an interdisciplinary technology and it has tremendous impact on various fields. The nature of interdisciplinary nanotech makes it widely applied in many domains applications. Nanotechnology is now a growing attention to interdisciplinary collaboration and research and development (R&D) activities in developing nanotech opportunities. However, up to now, very few studies have fully explored what kinds of factors drive nanotech R&D alliance activities in which across different disciplinary. A key issue and the focus of this study are the cross-border collaborative capabilities and networks required at the firm level to engage in meaningful network relationships to enhance nanotech collaborative R&D alliance activity. By establishing linkages between the nanotech firms and other various domains firms may helps to accelerate nanotech development activities. Thus, according to the network embeddedness theory, this study seeks to confirm the distinctiveness of measures of inter-organizational collaborative networks capabilities that may enhance interdisciplinary technology and knowledge exchange to increase emerging nanotech collaborative R&D alliance activities. Our efforts to develop an integrative framework theorizing inter-organization collaborative R&D networks based upon nanotech R&D embeddedness and nanotech cross-border R&D network status. Specifically, our findings show that nanotech R&D ties and structural holes have positively significant effects on nanotech R&D collaborative in which contingent upon the technological uncertainty. Furthermore, the results show that technological uncertainty is a moderator negative affecting the effect of nanotech R&D ties, structural holes on nanotech R&D collaborative activities. © 2012 IEEE.