Centrally to this research are collaborative research and development (R&D) activities between science and industry, from a consortium- and project level perspective. Within collaborative R&D activities between science and industry, multiple organisations pool resources for carrying out R&D activities. Multiple industrial organisations can be involved within these R&D Consortia, of which the composition is referred to as alliance diversity. The objective of this research is to optimise these consortia toward the achievement of innovative outcomes. The study of alliance diversity theorises an improvement of innovative outcomes through knowledge complementarity. The exchanging of knowledge is theorised to happen more efficiently when geographical distance is smaller. Alliance diversity and the geographical distance between industrial organisations are then considered as the central levers for influencing the innovative outcomes of R&D Consortia. The question central to this research is: “To what extent does alliance diversity influence the innovative outcomes of R&D consortia, and to what extent is this relationship moderated by the geographical distance between industrial organisations?”
The three hypotheses central to this study are:
 H1: Within R&D Consortia, the alliance diversity of industrial organisations has an inverse U-shape relationship with innovative outcomes.
 H2: The geographical distance of industrial organisations within R&D Consortia has a negative linear relationship with innovative outcomes.
 H3: The geographical distance of industrial alliances within R&D moderates the effect of alliance diversity on innovative outcomes.
To test these hypotheses, this research employs a quantitative explanatory research design. It is based on secondary data gained from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) and considers R&D Consortia within a subdomain of the NWO, which is the Applied and Technical Sciences (TTW) domain. Multiple Ordinal Logistic Regressions have been used for predicting the innovative outcomes of these consortia and then determining the influence of alliance diversity and the geographical distance of industrial organisations.
The results did not provide significant evidence to accept the first hypothesis. Indicators have been found towards the influence of alliance diversity on the knowledge generation within R&D Consortia. The observed relationship showed an inverted U-shape, even though this relationship was moderately significant. It is an indicator that an optimum exists for the alliance diversity within R&D Consortia. Managers of R&D Consortia should aim for the inclusion of slight alliance diversity for optimising the generated knowledge. Pure heterogeneity or homogeneity of alliance diversity should be avoided for optimising knowledge generation. An effect for alliance diversity on the economic- and societal gains generated through R&D Consortia has not been identified. The geographical distance between industrial organisations has not been found as a significant predictor for the innovative outcomes of R&D Consortia, so the second hypothesis cannot be accepted. The predictive models for the third hypothesis were subject to multicollinearity, so no reliable statements can be made about this. Through additional exploratory analysis, indicators for the existence of funding as a moderating variable between alliance diversity and the generation of new knowledge has been found. It is theorised that funding provides access to additional resources which enables the materialization of the additional knowledge gained through alliance diversification.