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The marginal effect of external technologies on innovation speed under complexity

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  • Lee, Yeolan
  • Fong, Eric A.

Abstract

Many organizations use external components in open innovation (OI) projects, which impacts their innovation search time. This paper builds theory about how innovation search time changes as OI projects adopt an increasing number of external components for innovation activity. It further examines how complexity moderates the relationship between the number of external components and innovation search time. Using a sample of 276 pharmaceutical product development projects, we found that complexity is an important moderator. Our results show that under low complexity there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the number of external components and innovation search time. In contrast, under high complexity, there is a U-shaped relationship between the number of external components and innovation search time. Our results provide implications regarding the marginal effect of external technologies on innovation search time under varying degrees of complexity.

Suggested Citation

  • Lee, Yeolan & Fong, Eric A., 2025. "The marginal effect of external technologies on innovation speed under complexity," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:techno:v:140:y:2025:i:c:s0166497224001950
    DOI: 10.1016/j.technovation.2024.103145
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