Technological diversity, uncertainty and innovation performance

Thomas Bolli, Florian Seliger and Martin Woerter

Applied Economics, 2020, vol. 52, issue 17, 1831-1844

Abstract: We analyse the impact of technological diversity on innovation performance in the discovery stage, measured by R&D intensity and patent applications, and in the commercialization stage, measured by the sales share generated by innovations, using Swiss firm-level data. While we do not find any impact of diversity on R&D intensity, we confirm a positive impact of diversity on patent applications as suggested by literature. Extending the analysis to the commercialization stage reveals that technological diversity decreases the share of sales generated by innovative products. We argue that this pattern emerges because knowledge spillovers matter relatively more in the discovery stage while coordination costs matter relatively more in the commercialization stage. Technological uncertainty further increases coordination costs (in both stages) and thus negatively moderates the effect of diversity on innovation performance.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2019.1679345 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:taf:applec:v:52:y:2020:i:17:p:1831-1844

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2019.1679345

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().