This study has some limitations that provide extensions for future work. Our context was a mature industry with established firms and a single performance criteria—low cost. It would be enlightening to investigate rapidly changing industries where innovativeness and speed are more important. It may be that in those cases, revenue through new business is easier to obtain and extraordinary gains are created such that all firms involved can gain abnormal profits, at least for a time. Our measures for revenue and profitability are at the level of the project, which enabled us to tie these together quite specifically. Although we could identify profitability of the prime contractor, our data were not sufficiently detailed to provide specific profit levels for each partner. We also could not obtain richer details about each dyadic relationship. If possible to obtain, that type of data could lead to interesting insights, such as how value created by a set of partners is actually distributed among them. In this context, outsourcing is highly correlated with the number of partners, but in other contexts this may not be the case. It would be informative to test and understand how repeated partnerships affect revenue and profits in situations with specific investments or uniquely skilled suppliers. Future research may also look at the nature of the product or service being transacted, and how that affects repeated partnerships. Further, scholars could investigate how the advantages and disadvantages of repeated partnerships develop over time, as our data suggest that it takes many years for this to happen. Researchers also could explore what specific governance mechanisms are used and how these develop.Outsourcing makes sense when tasks are numerous and uncertainty is not acute, especially since working with repeated partners helps firms grow through improved utilization of joint resources, better communication, and greater adaptability. However, a price is paid for this collaborative relationship: firms can become vulnerable, experience slacking, and overlook better, alternate partners. In that sense, friends and profits do not mix.