Geography of knowledge sourcing, search breadth and depth patterns, and innovative performance: a firm heterogeneity perspective

The geography of knowledge sourcing has attracted much attention as firms increasingly rely on external knowledge to accelerate innovation. However, the existing literature has been silent about the way in which firms utilize external knowledge and has largely neglected firm heterogeneity in geographical knowledge sourcing. This paper established a geographical search model by combining geographical scales of knowledge sourcing with firm-level knowledge search strategies to investigate the differentiated knowledge search patterns and innovation dynamics between technological leaders and laggards with survey data from Zhejiang, one of the leading provinces in China. It is found that, while a broad search of local knowledge contributes to product innovation by technological laggards, it exerts no significant influence on technological leaders whose innovation depends more upon a nonlocal variety of knowledge sources. The findings highlight the uneven and selective knowledge flows within a cluster and question the importance of localized strong ties in innovation.