Previous studies related to open innovation have presented piecewise implications in relation to various knowledge management capacities. The study published by Lichtenthaler and Lichtenthaler in 2009 presented a model that combines the various open innovation capacities of firms in view of a mix of knowledge management, dynamic capability and absorptive capacity. Despite these efforts, there have been few empirical studies on the relationships among capacities, or between capacities and performance from an integrated perspective. Therefore, this study seeks to clarify the relationships among knowledge capacities and between knowledge capacities, technological innovation and financial performance at the firm level. Our findings are that the transformative, connective, inventive and absorptive capacities both directly and indirectly affects technological innovation performance; and innovative and desorptive capacities are the key factors connecting technological innovation to financial performance. This study provides managerial implications for the balanced development of the various knowledge capacities and the improvement of technological innovation and financial performance for firm knowledge managers.

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This study examines the impact of gender at three different positions in a firm’s hierarchy on innovative activities, looking at over 6474 firms in 30 emerging countries. We create a dummy variable for each of the six survey questions on product innovation, process innovation, organizational innovation, marketing innovation, and R&D (Research & Development) spending. Each dummy acts as a dependent variable in a separate logit regression, and the sum of the dummies acts as the dependent variable in another ordered logit regression. We use the female ownership percentage, female top management, and female majority in the workforce as test variables. We use the Heckman two-stage model to address endogeneity concerns with gender. We find that the female ownership percentage is generally positively related to individual innovation measures as well as the composite measure, while female top management is positively associated with marketing innovation only, and a female majority in the workforce is not significantly related to any measure. The results suggest that promoting innovation in emerging countries would involve governments encouraging further market participation by women and supporting female CEOs (Chief Executive Officers) to innovate, and firms fostering innovation among female workers.

The pharmaceutical industry, where research and development (R&D) efficiency is central to company survival, has recently faced significant challenges. To increase efficiency, companies must implement strategies such as open innovation (OI), wherein they sell their intellectual property, maximize their use of external resources, adjust their structures, and implement new business models. In this study, we divided 701 U.S. pharmaceutical companies according to their OI strategies to measure and compare their R&D efficiencies between 2001 and 2016. We analyzed the deal data of companies by first dividing them into four groups (inside-out, outside-in, coupled, and closed) to calculate R&D efficiency using stochastic and meta-frontier analyses. In the first group analysis, the coupled group shows high technical efficiency, but in an overall comparison, the inside-out group achieves the highest efficiency values. These values increased between 2005 and 2010, when the R&D crisis in the industry was great at its highest. We thus identified the characteristics of each group based on our results, and presented extensive analyses using a time-series comparison and enterprise-level analysis. We claim that pharmaceutical companies can still cope with the current R&D crisis by implementing different OI strategies.

In recent years, technological mergers and acquisitions (M&As) have become important strategic tools for enterprises to access and utilize new external knowledge. In particular, in the biopharmaceutical industry, M&A activities are actively being progressed due to an increase in new drug development costs, a decrease in R&D productivity, and the patent expiration of blockbuster drugs. However, there is a lack of research on the integrated view of (1) the acquirer’s capability and (2) the dyadic relationship of the knowledge base between the acquirer and target on the innovation performance of the acquirer. Furthermore, there are few empirical studies on the impact of these factors on ambidextrous innovation; that is, exploitative and explorative innovation. Therefore, with this integrated view in mind, this study analyzed the effect of each factor on the exploitative and exploratory innovation performance of the acquirer. A negative binomial regression was conducted using patent data to measure the innovation outcome of the acquirer after M&A. The findings suggest that (1) the acquisition experience of the acquirer and (2) the technological commonness between the acquirer and the target both had a significant impact on the exploitation and exploration innovation performance.