How do serial acquirers realize serendipitous value in technology acquisitions?

The acquisition of technology organizations is being undertaken by a wide range of both technology and non-technology firms to provide strategic renewal, bring products to market more quickly, scale existing technology through larger sales channels, and sometimes even acquire key teams and valuable team members. While much existing M&A research focuses on how integration teams can deliver planned benefits intended by the acquirer (often cost-related), there are also mentions of serendipitous value available with technology acquisitions that can be delivered during the integration phase. We know that this unplanned value delivered post-deal is available to acquirers and can be significant, but we do not know why some deals realize it and others do not. Drawing on a multi-case, inductive study of seven acquisitions of small and mid-sized technology companies by three different large serial acquirers, this project surfaces processes used by integration teams to identify and realize this serendipitous value. The project delves into the acquisition experiences of the team members that executed the integration to 1) learn about how the codification of past integration experiences was used to guide integration, 2) how stakeholders were managed, and 3) how the emotions of the acquired team were managed, all with an eye toward learning about the unplanned value delivered during the integration. [17] This thesis document details the research project that was executed and includes three academic journal articles, one for each of the three topics, grounded in both academic literature and practitioner experiences to further knowledge about these topics. In addition, the project includes a section with thoughts for practitioners grounded in the experiences of the cases that may help acquirers expand deal value from their M&A. This research project and its articles contribute to the M&A strategy literature