How Knowledge Acquisition Diversity Affects Innovation Performance during the Technological Catch-Up in Emerging Economies: A Moderated Inverse U-Shape Relationship

Many domestic enterprises in emerging economies are concerned with the question of how to better utilize the portfolio of technology sourcing channels to achieve rapid economic growth by technological innovation. This paper looks at this issue by exploring the impacts of knowledge acquisition diversity (KAD) on innovation performance of domestic enterprises in China and the technological contexts (in terms of technology gap and technology development speed) under which KAD is most likely to contribute. Using panel data of the manufacturing industry in China over the 2001–2009 period, the results show that KAD has an inverse U-shaped relationship with innovation performance in terms of both product-related innovation performance (NPS) and knowledge-related innovation performance (PAT). Specifically, it reveals that the capability to generate technological innovation over time is dependent on how domestic enterprises manage their portfolio of knowledge sourcing channels to learn from foreign enterprises. Moreover, it is shown that the technology gap significantly moderates the inverted U-shaped relationship between KAD and both NPS and PAT. Technology development speed has a moderating effect on the inverted U-shaped relationship between KAD and innovation only in terms of NPS. The results of this study can help us to understand the relationships among technological contexts, KAD and innovation performance of domestic enterprises in emerging countries.This research was funded by the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province, China (grant number LY17G020011), the Humanities and Social Sciences Project of Ministry of Education, China (grant number 16YJC630054), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 71603235, 71672185), and the Youth Innovation Promotion Association, Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant number 2017201).