infonet-economy

This study focuses on how firms form and sequentially adapt their inter organizational knowledge sourcing structures within research and development (R&D) alliances and how this process impacts their innovation performance. In contrast to the previous literature that mainly ignores the dynamic aspects of how firms adapt their search strategies, our approach accounts for sequential adaptation. Our proposed framework explores the role of simultaneous diversification and sequential adaptation of collaboration partners within R&D alliances according to specific innovation outcomes. The results emphasize that firms should not remain within the same search activities indefinitely, as non-adapting interorganizational knowledge transfer structures lead to inferior performance. Notably, this study highlights important partner-type selectivity and identifies appropriate simultaneous diversification and sequential adaptation strategies in relation to specific innovation outcomes and firm sizes.