SEARCH FAR AND DEEP: FOCUS OF OPEN SEARCH STRATEGY AS DRIVER OF FIRM'S INNOVATION PERFORMANCE

The effects of open search strategies (i. e., search for firm-external knowledge) on firm-level innovation performance are still ambiguous in the existing literature. We introduce the concepts of focused search strategy and multi-focus search strategy as differentiating factors for a firm. The results of a cross-industrial survey from Finnish markets suggest that applying one focused search strategy intensively generally enhances the firm-level innovation performance. It also seems that emphasizing multiple search strategies intensively improves performance even more, and that the effect becomes stronger, the greater the number of knowledge sources used. Furthermore, the results show that firm-specific technological capabilities have a negative moderating effect in terms of highly focused search strategies, but this diminishes when the focus gets more diverse.