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This study aims to propose a combined effect framework to explore the relationship between research and development (R&D) team networks, knowledge diversity and breakthrough technological innovation. In contrast to conventional linear net effects, the article explores three possible types of team configuration within enterprises and their breakthrough innovation-driving mechanisms based on machine learning methods.

Based on the patent application data of 2,337 Chinese companies in the biopharmaceutical manufacturing industry to construct the R&D team network, the study uses the K-Means method to explore the configuration types of R&D teams with the principle of greatest intergroup differences. Further, a decision tree model (DT) is utilized to excavate the conditional combined relationships between diverse team network configuration factors, knowledge diversity and breakthrough innovation. The network driving mechanism of corporate breakthrough innovation is analyzed from the perspective of team configurations.

It has been discerned that in the biopharmaceutical manufacturing industry, there exist three main types of enterprise R&D team configurations: tight collaboration, knowledge expansion and scale orientation, which reflect the three resource investment preferences of enterprises in technological innovation, network relationships, knowledge resources and human capital. The results highlight both the crowding-out effects and complementary effects between knowledge diversity and team network characteristics in tight collaborative teams. Low knowledge diversity and high team structure holes (SHs) are found to be the optimal team configuration conditions for breakthrough innovation in knowledge-expanding and scale-oriented teams.

Previous studies have mainly focused on the relationship between the external collaboration network and corporate innovation. Moreover, traditional regression methods mainly describe the linear net effects between variables, neglecting that technological breakthroughs are a comprehensive concept that requires the combined action of multiple factors. To address the gap, this article proposes a combination effect framework between R&D teams and enterprise breakthrough innovation, further improving social network theory and expanding the applicability of data mining methods in the field of innovation management.

In this chapter, we analyzed the effects of internationalization on innovation, productivity, and firm performance among multinational pharmaceutical companies as representatives of a global knowledge-based industry. The empirical analysis used multiple stepwise regressions based on a sample of 149 firms headquartered in Europe and the US. The results indicate that innovation outcomes are positively correlated to the number of foreign subsidiaries (scope internationalization), whereas surprisingly, formal research and development (R&D) does not seem to directly influence innovation. This suggests that the firms benefit from local overseas subsidiaries to create and implement new innovative offerings. The number of foreign subsidiaries has a U-shaped relationship to patent productivity suggesting that firms can gain advantages by locating cost-intensive activities in low-cost countries and critical tasks in advanced market locations. Firm performance has a U-shaped relationship to sales abroad (scale internationalization) and the relationship is further enhanced by a high focus on R&D. This suggests that sales abroad enable scale economies, where R&D improves quality and relevance of products and thereby boosts performance. Finally, to validate the findings we conducted two semi-structured interviews with representative industry experts and gained further insights for an extended interpretation of results.

This study aims to explore the influence of social interaction processes on transactive memory system (TMS) practice, the mediation of knowledge integration to the relationship between TMS and team performance and the moderation of team psychological safety to the relationship among TMS, knowledge intentions and team performance.

The authors collected data from a sample of 366 team members from 55 research and development (R&D) teams in Taiwan and conduct the analysis using the partial least squares method.

The results of this study indicate that social interaction processes have a positive effect on a TMS; a TMS can foster team performance, but knowledge integration mediates the relationship between the TMS and team performance; and team psychological safety can moderate the relationship between the TMS, knowledge integration and team performance.

Existing studies not only fail to explore the influence of social interaction processes on a TMS practice but also lack empirical analyses to explore knowledge integration as a mediator and team psychological safety as a moderator. This study fills that gap by developing a model that includes these types of relationships and suggests the importance of the TMS in the context of R&D.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a patent-based framework for investigating the effect of previous and current open innovation (OI) adoption on firms’ knowledge management strategies and type of innovation output.

Patent data are employed for gauging innovation practices, exploitation vs exploration strategies, specialization vs diversification choices and type of innovation. The study is performed on a sample of 1,280 patents granted to 66 top R&D spending bio-pharmaceutical companies. The year of analysis is 2010.

The previous recourse to specific innovation practices influences the current practice selection. R&D collaboration, outsourcing and mergers and acquisitions are employed to pursue exploration. Past purchase of patents increases the likelihood to achieve architectural and radical innovation in current activities.

The work recommends the use of patent data to gauge many key elements for knowledge and innovation management. Results exhort scholars to investigate innovation practices at the knowledge domain level in order to detect specific behaviors.

The study provides a methodology for supporting decision-makers in assessing firms’ OI adoption, also performing the benchmark with competitors and R&D partners. Given the high computational effort required for applying the methodology, the authors are planning to give access to the software specifically developed for this study.

The work contributes to the current debate considering the effect of a combination of innovation practices on knowledge management strategies and type of innovation output, with a particular focus on OI activities. Moreover, the separation between the impact of previous and current innovation practices provides useful insights.

The purpose of this paper is to define co-exploitation, co-exploration, and alliance ambidexterity from the perspective of organizational learning; to analyze how knowledge bases, structural arrangements, and control mechanisms of R&D alliances influence co-exploitation and co-exploration; and to discuss how to achieve alliance ambidexterity by managing paradoxes around knowledge bases, structural arrangements, and control mechanisms.

This is a conceptual paper focussing on how to balance exploitation and exploration at the alliance level through managing three paradoxes of cooperation: similarity vs complementarity, integration vs modularity, and contracts vs trust.

While technological similarity, structural integration, and contracts are more likely to promote co-exploitation, technological complementarity, structural modularity, and trust are more likely to facilitate co-exploration. Alliance ambidexterity, which is beneficial for alliance performance, derives from either the combination of technological complementarity, structural integration, and contracts, or the combination of technological similarity, structural modularity, and trust temporally.

Researchers should analyze the possibility of building alliance ambidexterity in other types of interorganizational relationships, and find other possible antecedents of interorganizational learning.

Managers should not simply treat R&D alliances as one of exploratory interorganizational relationships, but pay equal attention to co-exploitation and co-exploration. To achieve this balance, practitioners should combine technological complementarity with structural integration and contracts, or integrate technological similarity with structural modularity and trust.

This paper is one of the first contributions that analyze how an R&D alliance could gain its ambidexterity through the management of nested cooperation paradoxes.

The purpose of this research is to explore how current implementation of KM practices, KM processes and KM-centred strategies among Malaysian R&D firms contribute to improving their knowledge quality. In addition, the KM practices investigated are supported by ways of how the R&D firms are motivated to share knowledge and what are the constraints inhibiting such sharing.

A total of 320 questionnaires were disseminated to Malaysian R&D firms and the response rate was 47 per cent. Descriptive analysis such as percentage, mean values and indexes were used to analyse the data.

Overall, the findings reflect the nature of R&D firms as knowledge-intensive organisations. KM practices show that there is a very high tendency of implementation of knowledge exploration and knowledge exploitation activities. In all, 90 per cent of more firms have implemented the three KM processes with constructing new knowledge appears to be the most implemented process. Knowledge-centred culture scores the highest overall mean, followed by leadership and HR practices.

This study provides an identification of KM practices that serves as a starting point for R&D managers to determine the gaps and appropriate actions to collectively achieve the desired R&D results and national innovation.

This study serves as a careful examination in exploring the extent to which KM practices, KM processes and KM-centred strategies are implemented in improving the knowledge quality in the Malaysian R&D firms. It helps R&D firms to frame their KM activities to drive the capability of creating and retaining a greater value onto their core business competencies.

Research and development (R&D) plays a significant role in creating and sustaining technological leadership. This paper aims to look at the extent to which R&D interventions stimulate innovation engagement.

This paper examines, in the main, secondary data sources from Honda to assess the extent to which R&D‐enabled plants enjoy both enhanced innovatory potential and employee engagement.

Initial indications point to a positive correlation between R&D and associated plant performance. Ongoing research suggests that there is a clear link between interventions and enhanced employee engagement. In addition, there appears to be evidence that monoculture outperform multicultural establishments.

The research was exploratory in nature and relied, in the main, on secondary data sources. However, access to the secondary sources was extensive which hopefully compensates for the limited primary data.

Practitioners and academics interested in the relationship between engagement, value add knowledge transfer, R&D and innovation should find this paper of interest.

We investigate the extent to which headquarters’ perceived knowledge about overseas R&D subsidiaries influences the level of control over them. We confirm that headquarters’ knowledge about its overseas R&D subsidiaries lowers the level of control over them. Surprisingly, however, granting legitimacy to R&D subsidiaries does not necessarily lead to a reduction in headquarters’ control. In addition, R&D subsidiaries’ legitimacy does not influence the effect of headquarters’ knowledge about them on the level of control. Although headquarters’ knowledge about R&D subsidiaries tends to grant them legitimacy, the effect of that legitimacy seems rather minimal. These findings imply that headquarters are reassured when it reduces its control over the subsidiaries based on updated knowledge about their current situations rather than on an already-established positive image of those subsidiaries.

This study examines how foreign R&D investment may explain interfirm variations in productivity performance of home country firms in terms of spillovers. Many have studied spillovers from MNCs to host country’s firms, but there is still scarce evidence on spillovers from outward FDI to the home country. This study analyzes spillovers from foreign R&D investment and hypothesizes that the benefit of outward R&D spillovers occurs only when knowledge accumulated in foreign R&D centers is effectively transferred to MNCs’ parent companies at home. This benefit depends on the mandate of foreign R&D units, their embeddedness in the host economy, and their entry mode. Using detailed firm-level data for Switzerland, our findings seem to support our arguments.

To resolve an inherent dilemma in extant research on geographically dispersed research and development (R&D), this study explores interdependencies between formal and informal network structures. Firms that seek to benefit from the decentralization associated with disperse R&D must align it with an informal structure that enhances organizational members’ motivation to share and assimilate their unique knowledge and skills. On the basis of an investigation among 424 US biotechnology firms between 1973 and 2003, this study reveals the moderating effect of the firm’s informal social structure on the effect that geographically dispersed R&D personnel have on the exploration of new technological opportunities. Specifically, the higher the social network density among R&D members, the more likely geographic disparity is to affect exploration; however, this likelihood decreases with an increase in power asymmetries. These results offer insights into the conditions in which the appropriate management of geographically dispersed R&D varies.