Gone fishing for knowledge?

Abstract

Purpose – Firms need to reach out for external knowledge in order to keep up with the pace of the markets and to renew themselves. Although research on open innovation and open knowledge search strategies is continuously accumulating, there are as yet only few studies examining the antecedents of the decision to use various external knowledge sources for R&D and innovation. The purpose of this paper is to narrow this gap by examining the effects of firms' strategic orientations on the scope of their open knowledge search.Design/methodology/approach – This study builds on a cross‐industrial survey of Finnish firms in exploring the effects of three types of strategic orientations (customer relationship orientation, entrepreneurial orientation, and technology orientation) on the use of open knowledge search strategies.Findings – The results show that the customer relationship orientation is associated with the tendency of a firm to use a market‐driven knowledge search strategy. The technology orientation, on...