The innovative knowledge created by firms that ultimately exit their industries represents a source of technology that existing firms may build on. However, no empirical work has examined if such knowledge dies with an innovating firm or if significant diffusion of knowledge occurs even after a firm exits an industry. We base our theoretical predictions about the differing effects of firm exit on private and public knowledge and discuss implications for interfirm knowledge transfer. Using the disk drive industry as our empirical setting, we investigated the main and moderating effects of firm exit on the rate of knowledge diffusion to other firms. Our findings are consistent with prior work highlighting the importance of location and employee mobility in knowledge transfer. We also found evidence that the ability to use a firm as a template plays a critical role in successfully replicating its knowledge. Absent this template, knowledge "stickiness" reduces knowledge diffusion.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Business in its series Working Papers with number
05-0100.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: ().
Related research
Keywords:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: