Collaborative Resources in Innovation and Global Competition: Profitability Implications

We argue in this paper that in expanding global competition, when the knowledge base of products and markets is complex and the sources of performance advantages are widely dispersed, the locus of innovation win be found in inter-firm collaboration, rather than in individual firms. By examining the role of firm resources and capabilities in innovation and business relationship management, we put forward a collaboration-innovation-performance model and derive hypotheses that link various findings in the literature on 'market-oriented innovation'. We test these hypotheses on a sample of 5627 firms across different industries both in the manufacturing and service sector in 13 countries. Results support our hypotheses and have implications for practice and future research on firm resources in innovation and inter-firm collaboration.