Firms compete increasingly in an open innovation environment. Search strategies for external knowledge become therefore crucial for firm success. Existing research differentiates between the breadth (diversity) and depth (intensity) with which firms pursue external knowledge source. A consensus...

Searching for externally available knowledge has been characterised as a vital part of the innovation process. Previous research has, however, almost exclusively focused on hightechnology environments, largely ignoring the substantial low- and medium-technology sectors of modern economies. We...

The paper empirically analyses the effect of R&D activities, human resource and knowledge management, and the organisation of knowledge sharing within a firm on the absorptive capacity of innovative firms for three different types of knowledge, namely absorptive capacity to use knowledge from a...

Searching for external knowledge has frequently been characterized as crucial for firm success. However, little is known about how the direction of search strategies influences innovation performance. In this paper, we argue that firms need to specialize their search strategy and that its...

Inventors often experience a low productivity after their company has been subject to a merger or acquisition (M&As). It is of central managerial interest to identify factors facilitating the integration of new inventive staff and thereby counteracting innovation declines after M&As. This paper...

Innovation success depends heavily on firm's ability to set priorities and select the most promising options from its project portfolio before the odds of success or failure become visible and reliable. We ask: What does previous innovation experience tell firms about what not to do in the...

We hypothesize that North-South trade is associated with knowledge spillovers that create labor productivity gains depending on various determinants of Southern absorptive capacity. We use the novel World Input-Output Database (WIOD) that provides bilateral and bisectoral panel data for 39...

This paper explores the contribution of design activities on product market performance of Belgian companies. While there is mounting evidence that design can be seen as a strategic tool to successfully spur sales of new product developments at the firm level, the topic of design innovation has...

Searching for externally available knowledge has been characterized as a vital part of the innovation process. The availability of such innovation impulses, however, critically depends on the environment a firm is operating in. Little is known on how institutional infrastructures for innovation...

Theoretical considerations suggest that secrecy reduces spillovers almost completely through non-disclosure, while the disclosure requirement of patents generates some spillover and at the same time allows firms to appropriate knowledge. In this paper we empirically analyze whether protection by...