Firm’s Local-distant R&d Collaboration And Innovation

A central concern of firm’s manager has shifted from internal innovation to open innovation with the development of open innovation.Open innovation describes a cognitive framework of searching and learning external knowledge and resource to improve the ability of innovation.From the perspective of the spatial boundary of resource acquisition,R&D collaboration can be defined as local collaboration and distant collaboration;Based on the search scope and utilization of knowledge,firms can divide R&D collaboration into the scope of collaboration and the depth of collaboration.Consequently,it is vital to conduct a proper and specific strategy of collaboration such as local collaboration or distant collaboration,scope or depth of collaboration for firm’s manager.The paper contributed to the literature by examining the relationship between R&D collaboration and innovation based across two dimensions: local/distant collaboration and the scope/depth of collaboration.To develop and validate the theories of organizational ambidexterity and knowledge search,we examine the effect of the balance and complementarity of local-distant collaboration on firms’ innovation,and we also explore the relationship between distant collaboration scope and depth of firms which are both in cooperate with local and distant partners.To evaluate our hypotheses,we collect a panel sample of 177 listed electric vehicle companies,located in the United States,Europe,Japan etc.from 2005 to 2014.And we use the negative binomial regression model to examine the relationship of different collaborative modes and innovation of firms.We mainly drive to the following conclusions:First,the complementarity between local and distant R&D collaboration is conductive firms’ innovation.With the increasing of complementarity between local and distant collaboration,firms can overcome identified shortcomings in the local knowledge base and the problem of lock-in.However,the balance between local and distant R&D collaboration exerts significantly negative effect on firms’ innovation.The balance between local and distant R&D collaboration will increase management cost and raise resource competition,which is negatively related to firms’ innovation.Second,the scope and depth of firms’ distant R&D collaboration both are curvilinearly(taking an inverted U-shape)related to innovation.We propose that firms’ innovation will be first promoted with the scope and depth of firms’ distant R&D collaboration because of knowledge pool expansion and cost reduction,but that,beyond a point,additional scope and depth which can increase the transaction risk and inertia thinking will cause negative influence on innovation.Besides,firms’ local collaboration has a moderating effect on the relationship between the depth of firms’ distant R&D collaboration and innovation.Specifically,firms’ local R&D collaboration significantly moderates the curve relationship between the depth of collaboration and innovation,that is,the high level of local R&D collaboration can strengthen the positive effect of the depth of collaboration and innovation,and reduce the negative effect of the depth of collaboration and innovation.