Unlike problems requiring new-to-the-world solutions that combine knowledge from multiple sources, operational problems can often be solved by repurposing existing knowledge from other contexts into new-to-the-firm solutions. Firms that seek new-to-the-firm solutions to operational problems face...

Technological search studies argue that problems trigger search, but we lack understanding of which features of a problem associate with a critical search activity: search breadth. This paper considers how different problem sources—proximate versus remote problem sources—relate to...