Search and Recombination Process to Innovate: A Review of the Empirical Evidence and a Research Agenda

Abstract

The view of innovation as a process of searching and recombining existing knowledge elements has been adopted in several industries. The innovation management literature has recognized the fundamental role that search and recombination play in innovation development. However, the relevant research has provided complex, fragmented and mixed results. The authors aim to identify areas of convergence and provide directions for future research by collecting empirical evidence regarding how firms conduct the search and recombination process. They conducted a systematic literature review of 87 empirical articles in the innovation management field. The review reveals differences among the solutions adopted both within and across organizational boundaries. Specifically, it shows that the variety and diversity of knowledge elements are critical in creating breakthrough innovations. Therefore, this paper discusses how to provide access to a variety of knowledge elements. It also highlights other fundamental questions calling for further investigation, such as how scientific knowledge elements are successfully recombined and how recombination and search dynamics occur in small and medium-sized firms. The review concludes by summarizing the current state of affairs and suggests promising directions for future investigation.

A temporal perspective on the relationship between top management team internationalization and firms' innovativeness

“…By acquiring knowledge from foreign places as well as global management skills, the resource base may be expanded beyond domestic borders, resulting in a vaster pool of resources based on which innovations can develop. This reasoning aligns with innovation studies that encourage firms striving to increase their innovative output to search for novel components beyond domestic confines (Rosenkopf & Almeida, 2003;Savino, Messeni Petruzzelli, & Albino, 2017). Our study illustrates that international TMTs are valuable human vehicles for collecting and sourcing such foreign knowledge and capabilities.…”

Gaining from scientific knowledge: the role of knowledge accumulation and knowledge combination

“…The reliance on in‐house technological knowledge and mature technological knowledge indicates a firm's preference for familiar and well‐established knowledge when creating new technological inventions. Such preference increases the firm's effectiveness in integrating multiple knowledge components into a coherent whole (Carnabuci and Operti, ; Savino et al, ). In other words, although scientific knowledge deepens firms' understanding in certain areas, firms rely on technological knowledge about integration and links among knowledge components (Makri et al, ) to internalize external scientific knowledge with their current R&D objectives.…”

“…Both literature of combinative capability and literature of absorptive capacity emphasize the importance of knowledge familiarity in organizational learning but the former focuses on the creation of new knowledge and the later focuses on the use of new knowledge. The exploitation of familiar and well‐understood existing knowledge is the first step to create new knowledge through recombination (Savino et al, ). The role of knowledge combination in integration of newly accessed knowledge should be as important as the role of knowledge accumulation.…”

“…Firms encounter two major challenges when using external scientific knowledge: how to search and access valuable external knowledge and how to integrate and apply scientific knowledge to create new inventions that advance firms' technological advantages (Savino et al, ). Literature on organizational learning suggests that knowledge accumulation and knowledge combination enable firms to overcome these challenges.…”

What Can We Learn From the Implementation of Monetary and Macroprudential Policies: A Systematic Literature Review

“…In order to provide a robust examination, sources were limited to English peer-reviewed journals, representing high-impact, validated knowledge (Podsakoff et al, 2005). Moreover, an approach was followed which was somewhat similar to those of Meier (2011) and Savino et al (2017), in that we considered only publications in scholarly journals with an Impact Factor greater than or equal to the median Impact Factor for the related category (in this case: Economics, Business, Finance and Management) in the 2015 Journal Citation Reports R (Thomson Reuters, 2016). 6 There was no restriction regarding the definition of a monetary regime, so that we could acquire a comprehensive understanding around this subject.…”