The Role of External Knowledge in the Introduction of Product and Process Innovations

This paper contributes a novel approach to appreciating the role of external knowledge in the innovative process based upon the notion of knowledge generation function. In so doing this paper impinges upon the rich literature on spillovers and yet introduces a sharp discontinuity that highlights the role of external knowledge as a necessary and costly input into the generation of new technological knowledge. It attempts to identify the contribution of external knowledge directly to the generation of technological innovations and to explore the matching between kinds of technological innovations that are introduced according to its sources. This approach enables to avoid the systematic confusion between the effects of external knowledge upon knowledge exploitation and its effects on knowledge generation and is able to assess more directly and specifically the role of horizontal and vertical flows of external knowledge on both the rate and the direction of introduction of new technologies. The results of the empirical investigations confirm that external knowledge is a crucial input into the generation of new technological knowledge and in the eventual exploitation to introduce technological innovations. Moreover it shows that external knowledge generated by upstream suppliers and flowing vertically, embodied in capital goods, within interindustrial filieres, plays a strong and positive role on the introduction of process innovations, while external knowledge that flows horizontally from competitors has stronger effects on the introduction of product innovations