In-House Versus Ex-House

Abstract

Innovation researchers over the past decade have increasingly stressed the importance of external knowledge sources to the ability of firms to innovate. These include user-producer networks (Lundvall, 1992), collaborative research with other firms or universities (Hagedoornet al2000) informal and formal links with universities (Mansfield, 1991; Pavitt, 1991), and contracted-out research (Howells, 1999). Several researchers have argued that innovative activities will increasingly depend on external knowledge sources (Gibbons, 1994; Georghiou, 1998), with Antonelli (1999) suggesting that “the systematic use of technological cooperation” will become “the dominant form” of producing new knowledge. Coombset al. (2001) refer to “distributed innovation processes” in which many different firms and institutions are involved in an innovation. One of the main justifications for the increasing importance of cooperation is the belief that modern technology is growing in complexity and consequently beyond the abilities of a single firm (Kash and Rycroft, 1994). Under these conditions, firms must collaborate in order to develop competitive new products and processes.