How knowledge exploration distance influences the quality of innovation

Abstract

This paper explores how the boundaries of knowledge exploration influence a firm's innovation capability. A conceptual framework integrating the concepts of external knowledge determines the firm's innovation quality. We hypothesise that both geographical and technological knowledge diversity have curvilinear (inverted-U) relationships with the presence of innovation quality. The hypotheses were tested by analysing the citations of 259,804 patents issued by the US telecommunication industry from 1998 to 2008. The results show that geographical diversity had the predicted curvilinear relationship with innovation quality but that technological diversity had a positive linear relationship with innovation quality.

Keywords:

• innovation quality
• geographic diversity
• geographic origins
• technological diversity
• knowledge exploration
• patent citation