Abstract
Strategic alliance is one of the most important strategies for firms in the pharmaceutical industry to gain access to valuable technological resources. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the characteristics and strategic alliances of American pharmaceutical firms influence their business performance. Data were gathered from three sources: Recap’s Biotech Alliance, USPTO and Compustat. The methods used in the research include descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, regression analysis and general linear model analysis of the SPSS software. Results show that the number of firm’s employee is positively associated with its financial performance, while a firm’s total assets can endanger its profitability. Besides, the R&D investment density is positively associated with its innovation performance, the management and market investment density is positively associated with its market value as well. In addition, the more the number of firm’s patent, the better the business performance. Furthermore, there are no conspicuous relationship between strategic alliance experiences of a firm and their business performance, but the later phase research strategic alliances (like pre-clinical and clinical phase) would contribute to its innovation performance, financial performance and the cumulative market value. Finally, there are interactive effects between the R&D investment densities the later phase research strategic alliances.