Abstract
‘Open innovation’ search strategies enable firms to identify and exploit knowledge that can lead to process innovations. Firms utilize search breadth strategies to integrate knowledge from diverse sources and/or search depth strategies to intensively seek knowledge from select sources. Using archival and survey data from 505 manufacturing firms, we find that search breadth is negatively related to process innovation outcomes and that search depth is positively related to such outcomes. The impacts of search breadth and search depth on process innovation are contingent on industry conditions. In industries characterized by process heterogeneity, firms with higher levels of search breadth have more process innovations. In industries characterized by high levels of productivity growth, firms with higher levels of search depth have more process innovations.
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