The interaction between external and internal knowledge sources: an open innovation view
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study the external sources of knowledge that better exploit internal knowledge in order to innovate.
Design/methodology/approach
A balanced panel of 1,266 firms that respond to the Survey of Business Strategies for a five-year period was used, which represents a total of 6,330 observations.
Findings
The influence of the absorptive capacity on new products is significant, with an inverted U-shaped relationship. The interaction between external sources of knowledge and firm ' s absorptive capacity has a negative effect on innovation up to a certain level (substitution effect), after which that interaction improves the innovation of firms, displaying a complementary effect.
Practical implications
Firms with excess of internal sources of knowledge do not obtain better innovative results because overtime firms tend to inertia and need external sources of knowledge to obtain new knowledge. Firms must be conscious that the effect on innovation of using a strategy of external knowledge acquisition could be different depending on their internal knowledge base level. Thus, those firms that select their strategies to combine knowledge appropriately will have better results.
Originality/value
This paper reveals that the positive effect of internal sources of knowledge on innovation decline after it reaches a high level because those firms with strong absorptive capacity may enter a state of organizational inertia that reduces their innovation. This research enhances the importance of identifying each of the external knowledge sources likely to be used, since their influence on innovation differs depending on the level of internal knowledge. Finally, this study is based on panel data models, which allows us to control unobservable heterogeneity improving earlier studies that had to rely on cross-sectional data.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Received 10 July 2013. Revised 13 December 2013, 23 December 2013, 24 December 2013. Accepted 26 December 2013. The authors thank the Editor and anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on the paper. The authors would also like to acknowledge the financial support received through the Research Project of the Ministry of Education and Science, ECO2010-201139 and to the SEPI Foundation for providing access to the ESEE data.
Citation
Díaz-Díaz, N.L. and de Saá Pérez, P. (2014), "The interaction between external and internal knowledge sources: an open innovation view", Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 18 No. 2, pp. 430-446. https://doi.org/10.1108/JKM-07-2013-0257
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
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