Coping with Knowledge Inertia for Improving R&D Team Creativity by Using Structural Equation Modeling and Hierarchical Multiple Regression

Abstract

The study reported here examined the relationship between knowledge inertia and R&D team creativity by focusing on the mediating effect of cognitive conflict with direct and moderating effect of intentional unlearning capability to find out how to improve R&D team creativity for sustainable innovation from the perspective of coping with knowledge inertia. Data from a two-wave survey of 135 R&D teams within 67 firms in China were used to conduct the analysis of structural equation modeling and hierarchical multiple regression. Results showed that as predicted, knowledge inertia can not only decrease R&D team creativity directly but also decrease it by reducing the level of cognitive conflicts among the R&D team members, causing serious damage to R&D team creativity. In addition, intentional unlearning capability can help the R&D team reduce knowledge inertia directly and moderated the negative relationship between knowledge inertia and R&D team creativity, which was when intentional unlearning capability was high, the negative relationship between knowledge inertia and R&D team creativity would be weakened, and when it was low, the relationship would be strengthened, thus further verifying the important role of intentional unlearning capability in reducing the negative impact of knowledge inertia on R&D team creativity for sustainable innovation.

Gatekeeper Networks, Knowledge Inertia, and Knowledge Performance in Business Incubators

“…The authors compared the results of gatekeeper intervention in the small-world network and the scale-free network. The impact of knowledge inertia on organization innovation was also significant (Wang et al, 2023;Xie et al, 2016;Zan et al, 2022;Zhou et al, 2022). It is valuable that knowledge inertia is taken into account when studying knowledge learning among the business incubator.…”

“…Wang et al (2023) empirically found that knowledge inertia negatively moderated the relationship between crossboundary searches and knowledge integration. Zhou et al (2022) showed that knowledge inertia was negatively correlated with the creativity of R&D teams. Jiang et al (2021) discovered that for new businesses, lower knowledge inertia made their decision-making more flexible and unpredictable, thus creating a temporary competitive advantage.…”

“…(2) The consideration of knowledge inertia is essential. Some scholars think that knowledge inertia brings negative effects (Wang et al, 2023), while others argue that knowledge inertia can have a positive moderating effect (Zhou et al, 2022). Knowledge inertia has important implications for knowledge integration and innovation in business incubator.…”