The effects of knowledge sourcing strategies on science-based firms' innovative performance: Evidence from the Spanish manufacturing industry

This paper provides empirical evidence on the effect of the external knowledge sourcingstrategies adopted by firms, on the development of both product and process innovation,and assesses to what extent this effect is influenced by the firm's internal technologicalcapabilities. Our empirical investigation is based on a sample of more than 600 science-basedfirms active in innovation activities taken from the Spanish Innovation Survey 2004. We find that the effects of the knowledge sourcing strategies differ significantlyacross innovation types (product or process innovation). In addition, our results suggestthat there are possible substitution effects between external sourcing strategies andinternal R&D. Thus, the greater the firm's internal technological capability, the lessimportant is the cooperation with scientific agents in determining product innovation.