Complementarities in the search for innovation—Managing markets and relationships

Christoph Grimpe and Wolfgang Sofka

Research Policy, 2016, vol. 45, issue 10, 2036-2053

Abstract: Extant research has characterized a firm’s search for external knowledge in its innovation activities as either relational or transactional in nature. The former implies that a firm chooses and develops collaborative relationships with knowledge sources like universities, customers or suppliers, while the latter suggests transactions governed by markets for technology. We argue that prior literature has ignored that both search strategies are interrelated and complementary: adopting one strategy has a higher marginal return on innovation performance if the other one is present. Moreover, we suggest the benefits from complementarity to be higher when a firm is more distant to the technological frontier in the industry and when markets for technology in that industry are shallow. We test our hypotheses on a sample of 3921 German firms from 2001 to 2009 and find support for our hypotheses.

Keywords: Search strategies; Collaboration; Markets for technology; Innovation performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:respol:v:45:y:2016:i:10:p:2036-2053

DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2016.07.007

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