Knowledge Accession Strategies and the Spatial Organization of R&D

This study investigates the technological knowledge accumulation pattern of the world's largest firms in the electrical equipment (EE) industry. The study founds that a firm's ability to integrate technologically diversified knowledge and its ability to access geographically dispersed knowledge can, respectively, enhance the firm's performance. Yet firms may face a potential tradeoff between these two types of capabilities. Moreover, EE firms with broader technological knowledge portfolios, which we have termed 'generalists', have on average enjoyed a better performance than firms with a narrower technological knowledge base, namely 'specialists'. The findings of this study generate important insights on how the accession and utilization of geographically dispersed technological knowledge affect corporate-level innovative performance. This study further contributes to a better understanding of firm heterogeneity in the structures of international knowledge accumulation within the same industry.