One of the most popular approaches to the study of collaboration between firms maintains that networks serve as a means to exchange and possibly create knowledge among the participants. Yet this "networks of learning" perspective ignores important variations in both firm attributes as well as types of alliances.

In this paper, I introduce a two-dimensional framework for the classification of agreements and generate four hypotheses about the motivations that may lead firms to participate in certain types of collaboration. In particular, I focus on economic, rather than knowledge-based, reasons for why firms enter partnerships. I test the hypotheses using data from a sample of biotechnology firms collected relatively early in the development of the industry. The results indicate support for an alternative to networks of learning explanations but also reveal an unanticipated finding that calls for further investigation.