Add to ORKGDrawing from the literature on attention-based view of the firm, knowledge base diversity and cognitive distance in alliances, this paper distinguishes between intra- and inter- industry alliances and investigates the effect of increasing numbers of such alliances on firm innovation performance. Intra-industry alliances offer lower opportunities for innovation compared to inter-industry alliances and are less demanding on firm management due to higher cognitive similarity between partners from the same industry. We propose that trade-offs between innovation opportunities and management efforts will result in an inverted U and a U shaped relationship between the number of intra- and inter-industry alliances and innovation returns respectivel...