Diversification and Innovation Revisited: An Absorptive Capacity View of Technological Knowledge Creation

作者：Sugheir Jeff^*; Phan Phillip H; Hasan Iftekhar

来源：IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 2012, 59(4): 530-539.

DOI：10.1109/TEM.2011.2165726

• Absorptive capacity
• innovation
• patents
• product diversification
• technology-based firms

The relationship between innovation and product diversification in firms has been studied and debated for decades. Early articles proposed a positive relationship, while subsequent research supported a negative influence on innovation from product diversification based on observable reductions in research and development expenditures. Such findings also suggest a negative influence on absorptive capacity from increasing product diversification. This paper uses an absorptive capacity perspective to revisit the relationship. Together with related literature on knowledge creation and transfer processes, a positive association between related product diversification by firms and the quantity of created technological knowledge is suggested. Evidence to support such a relationship is provided using patent data from technology-based firms in a sample of 1997 firm years between 1990 and 2006. Some evidence of a negative association between knowledge creation and very high levels of unrelated diversification is indicated, qualifying and supporting the "M-form" hypothesis. The findings more closely align understandings of the relationship between product diversification and innovation with the relationship between product diversification and firm performance.

• 出版日期2012-11