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The purpose of this paper is to investigate how firms in developing countries finance innovation. Notably, the study seeks to investigate whether innovative firms exhibit financing patterns different from those of non-innovative ones. It also examines the effect of financing sources on firm’s probability to innovate.

The study utilizes firm-level data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey. From 28 African countries, 11,173 firms have been included in the sample. A statistical t-test is used for two independent samples and logistic regression models.

The results show that innovative firms, specifically innovative small- and medium-size firms exhibit financing patterns different from non-innovative peers. Further analysis indicates that there is no statistically significant difference between the financing patterns of innovative and non-innovative large firms. In Africa, innovation is mostly financed using internal sources and bank finance. Equity finance and bank finance have shown a higher effect followed by internal finance, finance from non-bank financial institutions and trade credit finance on firms’ probability to innovate.

The management of innovative firms should reduce dependency on short-term and retained earning financing and increase the use of long-term instruments improve innovation performance.

A pending policy task for African leaders is to design and evaluate reforms to create a strong financial sector that willing to support the innovation process.

This study contributes to the existent literature on finance of innovation by examining how firms finance innovation activities in developing countries. This study provides evidence on how innovative firms exhibit financing patterns different from non-innovative ones from developing countries.

The purpose of this study is to identify the role played by external knowledge sources and intra-organizational collaboration as determinants of innovation in hotel firms. It proposes that local knowledge sources and intra-organizational collaboration determine the probability of producing incremental innovations, and that non-local knowledge sources determine the introduction of radical innovations.

Descriptive statistics made it possible to evaluate the importance of each of the external sources as the origin of ideas for innovation. Principal component analysis was used to find homogeneous groups based on the different knowledge sources contemplated. Multiple regression analysis was used to determine which variables predict a hotel’s capacity to introduce innovations.

The findings suggest a dissociation between innovations adopted by directly incorporating the specific knowledge provided by external agents and innovations that require the mediation of intra-organizational collaboration for their development.

Future qualitative studies can provide data that would considerably improve the understanding of how innovation processes are produced in hotel companies based on the use of external knowledge and how hotel firms develop spaces to exchange and combine internal knowledge.

Hotel firms can adopt innovations by incorporating specific knowledge from external companies or by developing their own innovations based on information gathered from external agents or events (e.g. customers, attending trade fairs and professional conferences). The transformation of this information into innovations requires the establishment of internal communication channels that foment employees’ collaboration and exchange of information.

The study provides empirical evidence for the relevant role played by both external agents and intra-organizational relationships as sources of knowledge to foster innovation in hotel firms. External agents are classified as local and non-local sources, and their effect on innovation is analyzed, distinguishing between incremental and radical innovations.

The combination of different knowledge sources has been considered conducive for innovation performance. While the literature has advanced regarding the combination of knowledge inputs as in internal and external research and development (R&D), the evolvement of knowledge blend from customers and competitors has also received substantial attention. The purpose of this paper is to delineate the sources of information from the customers into private and public and examine their direct effect on firm-level innovation. While the extant literature is mixed regarding this, no clear-cut results have emerged yet on the effect of knowledge combination from the private and public customers with internal R&D and human capital on innovation activities. This study, however, shed more lights on the inconclusiveness of the effect of knowledge diversity on firm-level innovation.

Using the microdata from the German Community Innovation Survey 2013, the authors employ a binary instrumental variable treatment model with Heckman selection, a suitable strategy to estimate binary variables to cope with a possible endogeneity issue.

The paper demonstrates that knowledge from customers in the private and public sector, and competitors are positively and significantly associated with innovation. The authors find evidence of a positive and significant effect of the combination of firm internal knowledge competencies with information from the public sector. In contrary, the blend of knowledge competencies with information from customers in the private sector and information from the competitors results in decline to innovation. The results also show that the blend of internal R&D with knowledge source from the customers in the public sector appears to have a stronger influence in the manufacturing sector than services. The results offer strong evidence of the positive link between knowledge diversity and firm-level innovation performance.

The results have significant managerial implications on the role of the blend of different sources of information in supporting a compelling internal knowledge development to optimise innovation performance.

This study is foremost to focus on knowledge sources from the customers in the public and private sector and its relationship with R&D and human capital in supporting a successful introduction of innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a typology of the information sources for new customers or suppliers on the basis of their existing relational linkage with the acquiring firm and to further explore whether various types of information sources for new customers and suppliers have any differential effect on a firm’s immediate innovation output.

The research sample was taken from the data collected by WB enterprise surveys (2005). The WB enterprise survey is considerably comprehensive for firm-level data. Relevant questions for the study were extracted from the survey. Simultaneously, EFA, CFA and SEM using AMOS 6.0 was run for the analysis.

The findings confirm that sources for a new customer and supplier with a strong relational aspect have a significant positive effect on a firm’s innovation output in the immediately following period.

The research acknowledges the need to measure the effect of new supplier/customer on innovation depending on the type of information sources separately for product and process innovation as one of the major limitations.

This research can help managers obtain information of holistic and critical nature to incorporate in decision making for improving firm performance in innovation.

Customers and suppliers are well-established external sources of innovation ideas and information. But to what extant new customers or suppliers may be effective resources for innovation may depend largely on the sources through which they themselves are acquired by a firm, which is relatively unexplored. This study addresses the gap is the first of its kind to explore the role of the sources of information for new customer/supplier on a firm’s innovation output in the immediately following period.

This paper aims to explore the effects of multiple external sources of knowledge and of the use of winemaker consultants on innovation in the Canadian wine industry.

The data for the study are taken from an original survey of wine firms in Canada covering the 2007-2009 period. The survey was carried out by computer-assisted telephone interviews, and it was addressed to winery firms that are engaged in growing grapes and producing wine.

The results show that the use of winemaker consultants positively affects all forms of innovation. At the same, as far as external knowledge sources are concerned, marketing sources positively affect all types of innovation, while research sources and general sources have a positive influence on particular forms of innovation. The results also show that winemaker consultants interact with other knowledge sources. Nevertheless, there are important nuances with regard to which type of knowledge sources is more compatible with the use of winemaker consultants for which type of innovation.

To date, there is no empirical evidence of the extent to which the use of external winemaker consultants and external knowledge sources interact together and what are their impacts on the introduction of different forms of innovation.

This paper explores the importance of the importing intensity for different intermediate inputs depending on their source (internal sourcing or intra-firm trade versus external sourcing or foreign suppliers) for different types of innovation (product and process innovation) and applied to MNEs (foreign versus domestic).

The sample contains 2,448 firm-year observations (2006–2016) of firms located in Spain that belong to an MNE group. The authors applied a conditional mixed process to a panel recursive bivariate probit model with robust standard errors.

The authors obtained three key results. First, intermediate imports do not always contribute to improving innovation, since their effects vary depending on their source. Second, intermediate imports from foreign suppliers (external source) are more advantageous for product innovation than those from intra-firm trade (internal source). Third, intermediate imports from intra-firm trade are more important for process innovation than those from foreign suppliers. Thus, the impact of importing intermediate inputs on innovation is contingent on the source of the imports, the ownership of the MNE and the type of innovation.

The paper contributes to this topic with new insights and results for MNEs. It identifies which import source is best for innovation depending on the type of innovative result expected. Moreover, it helps to uncover simultaneity and causal relationships between product and process innovation, issues which have not previously been considered in the literature.

This paper aims to focus on the human side of inbound open innovation by analyzing the effects that the adoption of different knowledge search strategies for innovation has on new recruitment needs.

Building on several theoretical perspectives, the study proposes three hypotheses regarding the relationship between openness and the need to recruit people with high technical and social skills. Using a pooled panel data from the Uruguayan Innovation Survey between 2004 and 2012, the authors identify open strategies followed by the firm.

The estimation results using pooled panel data confirm that the adoption of inbound open search strategies for innovation demands the recruitment of new employees with higher technical and social skills. Technical skills are more likely to be demanded than social skills. The effects observed are moderated by the intensity in the use of knowledge and information sources (KISs).

This paper revisits the analysis of specific knowledge search strategies at the firm level. In doing so, the study looks for the effects of specific strategies combining different knowledge sources and considers different levels of use of external KISs, from narrow to wide. While other studies have analyzed the human factor as a determinant of the success of openness for innovation, this paper re-examines the direction of this relationship. Finally, the study contributes to the evidence from a Latin American country, where these topics have received less attention.

This paper aims to develop the concept of internal search of ideas to show the contrast between search strategies adopted by firms that introduce new products into local and international markets.

Based on data from 2,652 innovative firms, the paper uses factor analysis to explore and confirm appropriate groups of sources of innovative ideas. The analysis differentiates between internal and two types of external sources. Logistic and bivariate regressions reveal different search strategies for innovation in local and international markets.

Firms reporting products new to international markets exhibit search strategies combining ideas from internal sources with ideas from other firms. Firms reporting products new to local market reveal a search strategy centered on ideas from other firms.

Managers and policymakers wishing to promote innovations for international markets should concentrate their resources on developing the organizations’ capacity to generate ideas internally while monitoring other firms’ ideas. Managers targeting local markets may focus their efforts on intelligence over ideas coming from other firms.

Clarifying the relationship between knowledge and ideas, the paper finds that search strategies of firms are more effective for innovation depending on the target market. Firms searching for ideas among other firms generate ideas that might trigger innovation in products new to local markets. Firms searching both for internal and external ideas generate ideas leading to products new to international markets.

Innovation projects are often risky and costly. But not all innovation projects lead to commercialisation; some are abandoned, and these abandoned innovation projects can be classified as a waste of resources. Therefore, this paper studies the influence of different external sources and a firm’s decision to abandon an innovation project. The purpose of this paper is to provide a broader understanding of abandoned projects.

The data applied are quantitative data and the empirical background is the Danish Innovation Survey 2009. The sample consists of Danish manufacturing firms with ten employees or more (n=840). The results are based on logistic regression analysis.

Results reveal that firms should consider that the involvement of customers can lead them to abandon innovation projects. However, if firms combine customers with universities, it will decrease the likelihood of innovation projects being abandoned. A more in-depth analysis shows that the involvement of customers from “Europe” (countries in Europe excluding Denmark) and the “US” leads to innovation projects being abandoned while customers from “other countries” (the rest of the world, including China and India) have the opposite effect.

The contribution is to the limited literature on abandoned innovation projects by suggesting that the type of external sources is a significant factor in firms’ decisions to abandon innovation projects. The paper identifies that the involvement of certain external sources leads firms to decide to abandon innovation projects, and that the country of origin of the external sources is an important criterion to consider in relation to a firm’s decision to abandon innovation projects.

This paper aims to analyse the impact of different knowledge sources used by firms to adopt organizational innovation, in relation to organization of responsibilities and decision-making in the workplace.

To fulfil the proposed objective, quantitative research, based on a sample of 2,591 Portuguese firms, has been undertaken. Data have been obtained from the Community Innovation Survey 2012.

The results show the importance of external knowledge from suppliers, clients, consultants and commercial laboratories in new innovation practices in firm workplace. Knowledge from competitors, universities, the State and research institutes does not present a significant effect.

Knowledge sources can stimulate the introduction of new management practices in the workplace, consistent with the external search literature on technological innovation, which argues that many of the ideas and implementation skills for organizational innovation come from outside sources.

Within the innovation management literature, very few studies tried to explore organizational innovation in firm workplaces. This paper is innovative and makes a novel contribution mainly to the knowledge management field by highlighting the importance of external knowledge sources in organizational innovation in firm workplaces from a knowledge-based perspective.