Collaboration for radical and incremental innovation:The roles of intra-region and intra-group knowledge spillover

激进式创新、渐进式创新与技术合作——区域内和集团内知识溢出的作用

Knowledge spillover via collaboration is essential to innovation,with proximity being a vital factor.Nevertheless,little consensus has been achieved on which form of proximity is more critical for innovation.Instead of reaching a definitive conclusion,we highlight the potential of addressing the argument through the lens of innovation heterogeneity.This work thus contributes to current literature by integrating two forms of innovation,radical and incremental,into the discourse of geographical and organizational proximity in knowledge spillover via collaboration.Utilizing a dataset of patents from China’s listed firms between 2001 and 2017,we first categorize radical and incremental innovation according to the characteristics of knowledge combination,encompassing the familiarity of combined knowledge and maturity of combination ways.We further investigate the heterogenous effects of intra-region and intra-group knowledge spillovers,linked to geographical and organizational proximity in collaboration,on radical and incremental innovation.Empirical findings demonstrate that innovation relies on knowledge spillover both within groups and within regions.Moreover,intra-region spillover is essential for fostering radical innovation,while intra-group spillover only facilitates incremental innovation.Our findings provide both theoretical and practical implications,suggesting that multilocational enterprises should enhance their collaborator selection to leverage diverse knowledge spillovers,thereby fostering radical and incremental innovation in distinct ways.