Foreign and Domestic Collaboration, Product Innovation Novelty, and Firm Growth

Abstract

Although prior research underscores the benefits of external collaboration for a firm's innovative output, little research has examined the role that collaboration plays across the different stages of the innovation process. Drawing from organizational learning theory, this article examines (1) how collaboration with domestic partners assists in the formation of collaborations with foreign partners, (2) how knowledge from these collaborations is associated with product innovation at different levels of novelty, and (3) how the relationship between the level of innovation novelty and firm growth is influenced by whether the focal firm engages in open or closed innovation and the origin of the collaborator (foreign or domestic). Three key findings emerge from the econometric analysis of a sample of 1684 Taiwanese firms. First, domestic collaborations assist in the formation of foreign collaborations when the partner type is the same. Second, the level of innovation novelty is associated with the type and geographic location of partners. This study differentiates among noninnovating firms, incremental innovators, and radical innovators and demonstrates that the role of partners changes as the number of countries in which a firm collaborates with each partner type increases. Third, only radical innovation is relevant to firm growth, regardless of whether it is developed internally or through collaboration with domestic or foreign partners. Practitioner PointsManagers will find it easier to form foreign collaborations with types of partners that a firm has engaged in collaboration with domestically.

A complexidade do processo de inovação e o papel dos fornecedores de conhecimento especializado: análise de microdados da indústria argentina

“…Ou seja, pode-se afirmar que a existência de um motivo hard, ampliam a probabilidade que a empresa estabeleça um vínculo com a universidade e com instituições públicas de C&T, corroborando com a H1. Este resultado vai de encontro com os estudos de Belderbos et al (2004), Mention (2011), Un e Asakawa (2015), Wirsich et al (2016), Hsieh (2017).…”

“…Apontar as características-chave no nível da firma é importante no reconhecimento das características que conduzem à procura estas fontes externas de informações. As variáveis selecionadas e muito da discussão aqui apresentada foram baseadas em Laursen e Salter (2004), Theter e Tajar (2008), Hsieh et al (2017) e Bittencourt et al (2018).…”

“…Neste sentido, tem-se observado um crescente número de estudos 3 utilizando abordagens econométricas baseadas em microdados, que buscam investigar como as características-chave das firmas se relacionam, e como essas características configuram as estruturas de redes externas de informação. Nesse sentido, este artigo incorpora parte dos trabalhos desenvolvidos por Laursen e Salter (2004), Theter e Tajar (2008), Hsieh et al (2017) e Bittencourt et al (2018), reexaminado tais determinantes à luz dos dados para a indústria argentina, e avança na literatura caracterizando os motivos subjacentes ao estabelecimento de suas conexões com as fontes externas de informação.…”

Alliance Network Diversity and Innovation Ambidexterity: The Differential Roles of Industrial Diversity, Geographical Diversity, and Functional Diversity

“…Grounding on knowledge-based view and organizational learning theory, previous studies pointed out that geographical diversity provides geographically dispersed knowledge that is lacking in the home state and improves and improving flexibility, responsiveness, and adaptability to foreign markets [46][47][48][49]. Notwithstanding the above benefits, geographical diversity also entails unique challenges from the perspective of transaction cost theory.…”

“…Although some studies empirically have found that geographical diversity leads to high innovation performance [30,49], most of them did not address the issue of the novelty of innovation or distinguish exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation. According to Sarpong and Teirlinck's [42] findings, geographical diversity may not enhance the balance between both exploitative and exploratory innovation.…”