The innovative performance of firms in heterogeneous environments: The interplay between external knowledge and internal absorptive capacities

Riccardo Crescenzi and Luisa Gagliardi

Research Policy, 2018, vol. 47, issue 4, 782-795

Abstract: This paper investigates the link between firm-level innovative performance and innovation prone external environments where knowledgeable individuals tend to cluster. Organizational ambidexterity and absorptive capacities (potential and realized) make it possible for firms to leverage the availability of external knowledge and boost their innovation performance. The empirical analysis focuses on England and is based on a novel combination of Community Innovation Survey (CIS) firm-level data and patent data. The results show that only firms complementing potential and realized absorptive capacities are able to take advantage of favorable external environments by actively combining internal and external sources of knowledge.

Keywords: Innovation; Geography of innovation; Absorptive capacities; Exploration and exploitation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (57)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733318300313
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: The innovative performance of firms in heterogeneous environments: the interplay between external knowledge and internal absorptive capacities (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:respol:v:47:y:2018:i:4:p:782-795

DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2018.02.006

Access Statistics for this article

Research Policy is currently edited by M. Bell, B. Martin, W.E. Steinmueller, A. Arora, M. Callon, M. Kenney, S. Kuhlmann, Keun Lee and F. Murray

More articles in Research Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().