barriers to knowledge seeking within mnc teams which differences matter most do international or non international differences between members matter most for multinational corporation mnc teams we consider two types of international differences arising from geographic locations and national origins and two types of non international differences arising from structural affiliations and demographic attributes examining the barriers to knowledge seeking between mnc team members we argue that whether international or non international differences create greater barriers depends on whether they are position based or person based using the social relations model to analyze 13 616 dyadic interactions among 2090 members of 289 teams in a large mnc we find that for both international and non international differences those that are position based i e geographic and structural differences created greater barriers than those that are person based i e nationality and demographic differences in addition familiarity from a prior team reduced the barriers created by international and non international differences that are position based more than those that are person based we discuss the implications of our study for understanding the micro foundations of knowledge flows in mncs

complementarities in the search for innovation managing markets and relationships abstract extant research has characterized a firm s search for external knowledge in its innovation activities as either relational or transactional in nature the former implies that a firm chooses and develops collaborative relationships with knowledge sources like universities customers or suppliers while the latter suggests transactions governed by markets for technology we argue that prior literature has ignored that both search strategies are interrelated and complementary adopting one strategy has a higher marginal return on innovation performance if the other one is present moreover we suggest the benefits from complementarity to be higher when a firm is more distant to the technological frontier in the industry and when markets for technology in that industry are shallow we test our hypotheses on a sample of 3921 german firms from 2001 to 2009 and find support for our hypotheses

new technology adoption in us telecommunications the role of competitive pressures and firm level inducements in this study we examine the reasons for the differential adoption levels of a new technology that of electronic switching across firms in the us telecommunications industry using theoretical postulates from the market structure inducements approach to firm behavior and the behavioral theory of the firm we propose that the incentives to adopt a new technology are positively related to the competitive pressures faced by a firm in its micro market negatively related to past levels of performance and positively related to slack availability our sample consists of 40 of the largest firms in the industry we use firm level data collected for the years 1973 1978 1981 1984 and 1987 and the results indicate strong support for our proposition our findings show that in general market effects via the mechanism of competitive pressures generated are strong in explaining inter firm variations in levels of technology adoption in the period since moves to deregulate the industry began however the firm level effects are equally strong if not stronger in explaining such variations both in the period leading up to the commencement of deregulatory moves and also immediately thereafter

combining valuable inventions exploring the impact of prior invention value on the performance of subsequent inventions innovation research widely acknowledges that most inventions are recombinations of existing ideas and technologies following this stream of research this study analyses how the values of prior inventions used to develop a subsequent invention influence the value of the new invention building on evolutionary theory and research on technological search and technological paradigms this article proposes a positive relationship between prior inventions value and subsequent invention value the analysis of a large scale patent data set of pharmaceutical and semiconductor firms largely confirms this notion however it also shows that the effect weakens when prior inventions are of higher value valuable prior inventions are also positively related to the likelihood that subsequent inventions are breakthroughs however while this effect also decreases when prior inventions hold higher values the decreasing effect occurs only at particularly high levels of prior invention value in contrast combining valuable inventions limits the likelihood of generating poor invention outcomes value in summary while the results lend support to theories of evolutionary and cumulative technological progress they also show that despite the recombination potential of technical knowledge there are practical limits to the benefits of valuable inputs

towards an attention based view of the firm the central argument is that firm behavior is the result of how firms channel and distribute the attention of their decision makers what decision makers do depends on what issues and answers they focus their attention on what issues and answers they focus on depends on the specific situation and on how the firm s rules resources and relationships distribute various issues answers and decision makers into specific communications and procedures the paper develops these theoretical principles into a model of firm behavior and presents its implications for explaining firm behavior and adaptation 1997 by john wiley sons ltd

navigating the paradox of openness in energy and transport innovation insights from eight corporate clean technology research and development case studies using an inductive case study approach drawn from original interview data this article investigates the innovation approaches among a sample of international energy companies or corporate firms it first presents a conceptual framework synthesized from the business studies entrepreneurship evolutionary economics innovation studies management science organization studies political science and sociology literature this framework suggests that corporate approaches to clean technology innovation will cut across the four dimensions of organizational multiplicity and stakeholder involvement information sharing coordination and control and market orientation it then explores how eight firms the algal carbon conversion flagship and aurora algae biofuel dong and statoil carbon capture and storage tesla and volkswagen electric vehicles and siemens and vestas offshore wind turbines approach clean technology development with open innovation attributes mixed with closed attributes although the study finds striking similarities among the particular approaches embraced by each corporate actor it also notes that approaches are technology and firm specific and the potential for different permutations leads to an almost endless number of possible stylistic combinations the innovation profiles depicted also reveal conflict and competition among various stakeholders the implication being that corporate innovation in the energy sector remains a conflicted disjointed and messy process

technology as a complex adaptive system evidence from patent data this paper develops a theory of invention by drawing on complex adaptive systems theory we see invention as a process of recombinant search over technology landscapes this framing suggests that inventors might face a complexity catastrophe when they attempt to combine highly interdependent technologies our empirical analysis of patent citation rates supports this expectation our results also suggest however that the process of invention differs in important ways from biological evolution we discuss the implications of these findings for research on technological evolution industrial change and technology strategy 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

the sensitivity of returns to research calculations to supply elasticity returns to research are thought to be robust under alternative supply elasticity assumptions we show both conceptually and numerically how advances in approximating social benefits make returns to research sensitive to the supply elasticity despite this greater sensitivity these advances retain conceptual and practical advantages we make recommendations for dealing with the increased sensitivity copyright 2002 oxford university press

a behavioral theory of r d expenditures and innovations evidence from shipbuilding i base an integrated model of innovation development and launch on the behavioral theory of the firm this model specifies that research and development expenses are increased when low performance causes problemistic search and when excess resources cause slack search innovations generated by search are launched if low performance gives managers high risk tolerance using data from shipbuilding firms i show that high performance reduces r d intensity and innovation launches and high slack increases r d intensity as predicted

using electoral cycles in police hiring to estimate the effect of police on crime comment previous empirical studies have uncovered little evidence that police reduce crime possibly due to simultaneity problems this paper uses the timing of mayoral and gubernatorial elections as an instrumental variable to identify a causal effect of police on crime increases in the size of police forces are shown to be disproportionately concentrated in mayoral and gubernatorial election years increases in police are shown to substantially reduce violent crime but have a smaller impact on property crime the null hypothesis that the marginal social benefit of reduced crime equals the costs of hiring additional police cannot be rejected

surplus distribution from the introduction of a biotechnology innovation we examine the distribution of welfare from the introduction of bt cotton in the united states in 1996 the welfare framework explicitly recognizes that research protected by intellectual property rights generates monopoly profits and makes it possible to partition these rents among consumers farmers and the innovating input firms we calculate a total increase in world surplus of 240 3 million for 1996 of this total the largest share 59 went to u s farmers the gene developer monsanto received the next largest share 21 followed by u s consumers 9 the rest of the world 6 and the germplasm supplier delta and pine land company 5

steven d levitt 2003 john bates clark medalist steve s clark medal citation mentions his path breaking contributions to the economics of crime and to the political economy of campaign finance this paper describes steve s research in each of these areas as well as his contributions on a range of other topics it identifies the substantive themes as well as the methodological patterns that run through steve s research and it describes the economic issues that have been informed by his analysis

is the tendency to variation a chief cause of progress this paper briefly reviews the sources of the diversity of innovative activity within industries and interprets the literature to suggest that there are three ways in which such diversity may stimulate technological progress including a selection effect a breadth effect and a complementarity effect using industry level data from the yale survey administered in the 1980s the paper presents preliminary empirical results on the relationship between the diversity of r d activities within industries and their rate of technical advance this exploratory exercise finds that controlling for industry r d intensity greater diversity in innovative activity is associated with a more rapid pace of technological change policy implications are considered copyright 2001 by oxford university press

can the public sector meet the challenge of private research commentary on falcon and fowler and pingali and traxler abstract the growth of private sector participation in agricultural research has serious implications for pro poor technology development but there are other factors that must be considered new plant varieties are not the only things standing between resource poor farmers and secure livelihoods and institutional strengthening is also necessary in addition the current state of public agricultural research is cause for concern it is not clear how many effective public private partnerships can be formed the public sector needs a much clearer definition of its targets and priorities and funding strategies for national and international agricultural research must be overhauled

keep searching and you ll find what do we know about variety creation through firms search activities for innovation this article critically reviews and synthesizes the contributions found in theoretical and empirical studies of firm level innovation search processes it explores the advantages and disadvantages of local and non local search discusses organizational responses and identifies potential exogenous triggers for different kinds of search it argues that the initial focus on local search was a consequence in part of the attention in evolutionary economics to path dependent behavior but that as localized behavior was increasingly accepted as the standard mode studies began to question whether local search was the best solution in all cases more recently the literature has focused on the trade offs being created by firms having to balance local and non local search we account also for the apparent variety paradox in the stylized fact that organizations within the same industry tend to follow different search strategies but end up with very similar technological profiles in fast growing technologies the article concludes by highlighting what we have learnt from the literature and suggesting some new avenues for research

toward a model of risk in declining organizations an empirical examination of risk performance and decline scholars who study organizational decline have argued that declining organizations reduce or eliminate their riskier activities such as innovation further they cite reduced risk taking as a primary contributor to further decline scholars with an interest in risk per se come to the opposite conclusion low performing firms often take more risks than other firms and such risks reduce subsequent performance this study attempts to resolve these conflicting views by examining the risk of firms in decline our model based on cyert march s cyert r m j g march 1963 a behavioral theory of the firm prentice hall englewood cliffs nj behavioral theory of the firm includes six basic variables 1 performance 2 slack 3 aspirations 4 expectations 5 risk income stream uncertainty and 6 organization size as a measure of decline the estimated model includes prior levels of risk and performance in the risk and performance equations respectively as controls this study uses data on 34

ex ante analysis of the benefits of transgenic drought tolerance research on cereal crops in low income countries this article develops a framework to examine the ex ante benefits of transgenic research on drought in eight low income countries including the benefits to producers and consumers from farm income stabilization and the potential magnitude of private sector profits from intellectual property rights iprs the framework employs country specific agroecological drought risk zones and considers both yield increases and yield variance reductions when estimating producer and consumer benefits from research benefits from yield variance reductions are shown to be an important component of aggregate drought research benefits representing 40 of total benefits across the eight countries further estimated annual benefits of us 178 million to the private sector suggest that significant incentives exist for participation in transgenic drought tolerance research

a failure inducement model of research and development expenditure abstract empirical evidence for the schumpeterian suggestion of a positive relationship between profitability and innovative effort is slim in fact the opposite is often suggested an alternative failure inducement hypothesis argues that firms make innovative efforts when performance falls below a minimum threshold resulting in a negative relationship between profitability and r d expenditures data on r d expenditures in italian industry in the early 1980s a period of severe economic crisis show that both hypotheses are relevant for firms whose profits are well above or well below average respectively

a formal analysis of knowledge combination in multinational enterprises this paper outlines a model of process organisation for the combination of different types of knowledge from spatially separated sources in the multinational enterprise the model envisages an initiator entrepreneur as the motor of the process and identifies regularities in the types of knowledge combination within the firm that provide additional value knowledge losses decision losses and coordination losses are imperfections in the process and result in barriers to the effective combination of knowledge strategies of combination are of three types additive sequential and complex implying different types of control outcomes

unbundling the structure of inertia resource versus routine rigidity i work to unbundle the structure of inertia into two distinct categories resource rigidity failure to change resource investment patterns and routine rigidity failure to change organizational p

recruitment knowledge integration and modes of innovation abstract this paper investigates how the strength and intrinsic characteristics of firms knowledge bases and processing routines have evolved with the past inflow of employees the empirical analysis is based on linked public register and innovation survey data for norway it finds that recruitment from universities research institutes and higher education institutions has increased the capacity of firms to generate technical inventions yet the organizational knowledge bases and processing routines on which commercial innovation output depends have been strengthened only by the recruitment that has occurred from related industries implications for research management and policy are drawn

abortion legalization and child living circumstances who is the marginal child weexaminethe impact ofincreased abortion availabilityon the averageliving standards of children through a selection effect would the marginal child whowas not born have grown up in different circumstances than the average child we use variation in the timing of abortion legalization across states to answer this question cohorts born after legalized abortion experienced a signiecant reduction in a number of adverse outcomes we end that the marginal child would have been 40 60 percent more likely to live in a single parent family to live in poverty to receive welfare and to die as an infant access to abortion is one of the most contentious public policy issues facing the united states today the period since the legalization of abortion under the roe v wade decision of 1973 has been marked by incessant debate over the appropriate government enancing and legal status of abortions meanwhile pregnancy resolution through abortion is a very common outcome in the united states roughly 25 percent of all pregnancies are aborted ventura et al 1995 as a result major changes in abortion access could have substantial effects on the birthrate indeed levine staiger kane and zimmerman end that the legalization of abortion in the early 1970s led to an 8 percent reduction in the birthrate 1

the multifaceted nature of exploration and exploitation value of supply demand and spatial search for innovation in this paper exploration and exploitation are conceptualized in terms of a nonlocal local search continuum in three dimensional supply demand and geographic space using cross sectional data from a wide range of manufacturing industries we develop and validate an operational measure of the exploration exploitation concept in line with theory based arguments our analysis suggests that the value of supply side demand side and spatial exploration and exploitation is contingent on the environment while boundary spanning supply side search is found to be positively associated with innovation in more dynamic environments typical of the entrepreneurial regime phase of technology evolution such exploration appears to hurt innovation in less dynamic environments in a reverse fashion while boundary spanning demand side search is found to be favorably associated with innovation in less dynamic environments it appears to harm innovation in a more dynamic context interestingly spatial boundary spanning search seems to contribute to innovation in more as well as less dynamic environments with the caveat that the substantive findings of this study are based on cross sectional data we discuss the implications of our work and future research directions

the potential benefits of herbicide resistant transgenic rice in uruguay lessons for small developing countries abstract in many developing countries the potential benefits from adopting a transgenic variety developed by a multinational corporation are limited by the crop s small production base this paper presents an ex ante evaluation of the economic impact of herbicide resistant transgenic rice in a small developing country uruguay to fully account for the multinational s market power the firm s seed markup is assumed to affect the adoption rate for the variety stochastic simulation techniques are employed to understand how potential benefits may vary with changes in technology yield costs and adoption parameters the results indicate a 1 82 million mean net present value for producers from the development and utilization of transgenic rice in uruguay and 0 55 million for the multinational these relatively small multinational firm benefits suggest that a firm will not undertake significant efforts to develop transgenic varieties adapted to local conditions without either strategic partnerships with local institutions or access to wider regional markets

technological exploration through licensing new insights from the licensee s point of view the market for technology plays a crucial role in firms technology strategy as a way to undertake search in the available technological space drawing on innovation search theory and the literatures on licensing and absorptive capacity ac we address the issue of the factors that affect how technologically distant from the existing technological portfolio in licensing firms are able to move when they in license externally developed technologies we posit that a long technological distance reflects the outcome of more exploratory search while a short distance reflects the outcome of exploitative search we conjecture two distinct dimensions of ac in terms of the firms stock of knowledge assimilation capacity and the degree to which firms have searched broadly in the past monitoring ability t o affect the distance of exploration from the existing technological portfolio furthermore we compare firms that explore through licensing and firms which do not explore through licensing but do so through search reflected in own patenting activities we propose that the effects of assimilation capacity and monitoring ability should be more pronounced for licensees combining data on 176 license agreements and related patent information and while using a control sample of non licensing firms we find with exceptions support for these ideas

on the sources and significance of interindustry differences in technological opportunities abstract the set of technological opportunities in a given industry is one of the fundamental determinants of technical advance in that line of business we examine the concept of technological opportunity and discuss three categories of sources of those opportunities advances in scientific understanding and technique technological advances originating in other industries and in other private and governmental institutions and feedbacks from an industry s own technological advances data from the yale survey on industrial research and development are used to measure the strength of various sources of technological opportunity and to discern interindustry differences in the importance of these sources we find that interindustry differences in the strength and sources of technological opportunities contribute importantly to explanations of cross industry variation in r d intensity and technological advance

transport costs and smallholder cropping choices an application to siaya district kenya smallholders regularly devote shares of resources to low yielding food crops than they do to cash crops that have higher market returns in this paper costly exchange is incorporated into an agricultural household model and a numerical nonseparable version of the model is used to show that seemingly inefficient cropping choices of this type in siaya district kenya can be explained as rational food import substitution given high transport costs in product markets improved rural road networks that reduce these costs could abate motives to meet food needs through domestic production and promote specialization that raises farm incomes

the technological competencies of the world s largest firms complex and path dependent but not much variety firm specific technological competencies help explain why firms are different how they change over time and whether or not they are capable of remaining competitive data on more than 400 of the world s largest firms show that their technological competencies have the following characteristics 1 1 they are typically multi field and becoming more so over time with competencies ranging beyond their product range in technical fields outside their distinctive core 2 2 they are highly stable and differentiated with both the technology profile and the directions of localised search strongly influenced by firms principal products 3 3 the rate of search is influenced by both the firm s principal products and the conditions in its home country however considerable unexplained variance suggests scope for managerial choice these findings confirm the importance of complexity and path dependency in the accumulation of firm specific technological competencies and show that managers are heavily constrained in the directions of their technological search they also show the limits of the notion of competition through variety given that the same specific field of technological competence is often essential to the development of a range of possible product configurations technological imperatives still exist

imitation costs and patents an empirical study it has long been recognised that the costs of imitating new products have an important effect on the incentives for innovation in a market economy as arrow i962 and others have pointed out if firms can imitate an innovation at a cost that is substantially below the cost to the innovator of developing the innovation there may be little or no incentive for the innovator to carry out the innovation in their discussions of the innovation process economists frequently have called attention to the major role played by the costs of imitation but there has been little or no attempt to measure these costs to test various hypotheses concerning the factors influencing them or to estimate their effects in this paper we report some findings of what seems to be the first study of this topic in addition we present data regarding the effects of patents on imitation costs and on the rate of innovation

the influence of local search and performance heuristics on new design introduction in a new product market abstract this study develops and tests three sets of predictions concerning new design introduction during the initial period of ferment in a new product market we root our predictions most directly in the evolutionary economic concepts of local search and performance heuristics first we argue that new entrants will introduce most designs that are new to a product market during an initial period of ferment second we argue that local search will lead most product market incumbents that introduce second or subsequent designs after their entry to introduce designs that are similar to those incorporated in their existing products third we argue that firms selling products based on designs that are losing aggregate share in the market will be likely to introduce products based on new designs while firms losing market share to firms that are selling the same design are unlikely to introduce new designs our empirical analysis examines the magnetic resonance imaging mri subfield of the diagnostic imaging equipment industry between 1980 and 1986 a period that begins with the introduction of the first mri design and ends with the emergence of widely accepted design characteristics the results support the argument that local search and performance heuristics along with other market factors and business characteristics influence design introduction during a period of ferment

a man on the inside unlocking communities as complementary assets abstract since teece s seminal paper explaining who were the gainers from technological innovation increased globalization and the information and communication technology revolution have brought new ways for firms to organize and appropriate from innovation a new more open model of innovation suggests that firms can benefit from sources of innovation that stem from outside the firm the central theme of this paper is how firms try to unlock communities as complementary assets these communities exist outside firm boundaries beyond ownership or hierarchical control because of practices developed by communities to protect their work firms need to assign individuals to work in these communities in order to gain access to developments and to an extent influence the direction of the community using network analysis we show that some software firms sponsor individuals to act strategically within a free and open source software foss community firm sponsored individuals interact with more individuals than interact with them and also they seek to interact with central individuals in the community however we can see differences in how individuals interact depending on whether their affiliation is with a dedicated foss firm or an incumbent in the software industry apparently some firm managers believe they need a man on the inside to be able to gain access to communities

in search of complementarity in innovation strategy internal r d and external knowledge acquisition empirical research on complementarity between organizational design decisions has traditionally focused on the question of existence of complementarity in this paper we take a broader approach to the issue combining a productivity and an adoption approach while including a search for contextual variables in the firms strategy that affects complementarity analysis of contextual variables is not only interesting per se but also improves the productivity test for the existence of complementarity we use our empirical methodology to analyze complementarity between innovation activities internal research and development r d and external knowledge acquisition our results suggest that internal r d and external knowledge acquisition are complementary innovation activities but that the degree of complementarity is sensitive to other elements of the firms strategic environment we identify reliance on basic r dthe importance of universities and research centers as an information source for the innovation processas an important contextual variable affecting complementarity between internal and external innovation activities

crime punishment and the market for offenses crime is a subject of intense emotions conflicting ideologies however economists have generally explained it as a reflection of individual choice and equilibrating market forces two major themes of the literature are outlined the evolution of a market model to explain the diversity of crime across time and space and the debate about the usefulness of positive versus negative incentives systematic analyses generally indicate that crime is affected on the margin by both positive and negative incentives there are serious limitations to the effectiveness of incapacitation and rehabilitation and optimal enforcement strategies involve trade offs between narrow efficiency and equity considerations

evolutionary economics and technology policy in this brief paper i propose to explore the economics of technology policy from an evolutionary perspective as with any evolutionary argument the central concern is with the mechanisms of economic change in this case in relation to the development of new technologies and patterns of organisation and their spread into the wider economic system in this sense we build upon one of the major stylized facts of modern growth structural change at all levels from the microeconomic to the macroeconomic to any observer of the policy making process let alone a practitioner the contrast between the theory which underpins policy and the implementation of policy will seem acute as nelson and winter i982 have rightly insisted research into policy is shaped by policy questions not by an agenda relating to how economic theory can be developed to deal with innovation setting priorities designing instruments and evaluating outcomes do not link easily with the general ideas dealt with below among the general points we will stress two will be of critical importance first that the innovation activities of firms involve a wider range of other institutions supplying the knowledge and skills which underpin the efforts of individual firms we term this the systems perspective on innovation nelson i993 secondly it is not helpful to treat innovation and the diffusion of innovation as separate categories in fact they are inseparable with feedback from diffusion being one of the critical elements shaping how a technology is developed we begin with a brief review of the familiar market failure perspective on policy and build from this into a brief overview of the evolutionary approach the paper concludes with an outline of the systems perspective on technology policy it is taken as read that virtually any economic policy can have implications in principle for the process of innovation however we treat technology policy in a narrow sense even though it spills over into questions of education policy science policy and competition policy

who owns the media the authors examine patterns of media ownership in 97 countries around the world they find that almost universally the largest media firms are controlled by the government or by private families government ownership is more pervasive in broadcasting than in the printed media government ownership is generally associated with less press freedom fewer political and economic rights inferior governance and most conspicuously inferior social outcomes in education and health the adverse effects of government ownership on political and economic freedom are stronger for newspapers than for television the adverse effects of government ownership of the media do not appear to be restricted solely to instances of government monopoly the authors present a range of evidence on the adverse consequences of state ownership of the media state ownership of the media is often argued to be justified on behalf of the social needs of the disadvantaged but if their findings are correct increasing private ownership of the media through privatization or by encouraging the entry of privately owned media can advance a variety of political and economic goals especially those of meeting the social needs of the poor

changing locus of agricultural research will the poor benefit from biotechnology and privatization trends over the past decade the locus of agricultural research and development has shifted dramatically from the public to the private multinational sector three interrelated forces are transforming the system for supplying improved agricultural technologies to the world s farmers the first is the strengthened and evolving environment for protecting intellectual property in plant innovations the second is the rapid pace of discovery and growth in importance of molecular biology and genetic engineering finally agricultural input and output trade is becoming more open in nearly all countries these developments have created a powerful new set of incentives for private research investment altering the structure of the public private agricultural research endeavor particularly with respect to crop improvement

the role of knowledge in r d efficiency past research has recognized that both demand and capability influence the allocation of r d resources scholars have had an easier time getting a grip on demand than on capability while it has been recognized that knowledge is an important part of capability to date formalization of knowledge and its role in r d activity has been unsatisfactory this paper models the role of knowledge in r d various sources of such knowledge are considered the model throws a different light on analyses that employ a knowledge capital stock and also illuminates the dual private and public nature of technological knowledge

technologies products and organization in the innovating firm what adam smith tells us and joseph schumpeter doesn t adam smith s insights into the increasingly specialized nature of knowledge production are crucially important in understanding the contemporary problems of managing innovating firms products and firms are based on an increasing range of fields of specialized technological understanding competition is not based on technological diversity but on diversity and experimentation in products etc firms rarely fail because of an inability to master a new field of technology but because they do not succeed in matching the firm s systems of coordination and control to the nature of the available technological opportunities copyright 1998 by oxford university press

the paradox of openness appropriability external search and collaboration a b s t r a c t to innovate firms often need to draw from and collaborate with a large number of actors from outside their organization at the same time firms need also to be focused on capturing the returns from their innovative ideas this gives rise to a paradox of openness the creation of innovations often requires openness but the commercialization of innovations requires protection based on econometric analysis of data from a uk innovation survey we find a concave relationship between firms breadth of external search and formal collaboration for innovation and the strength of the firms appropriability strategies we show that this concave relationship is stronger for breadth of formal collaboration than for external search there is also partial evidence suggesting that the relationship is less pronounced for both external search and formal collaboration if firms do not draw ideas from or collaborate with competitors we explore the implications of these findings for the literature on open innovation and innovation strategy 2013 the authors published by elsevier b v all rights reserved