Dear all,
The recent literature has stressed on the relevant role that technology acquisition is of foremost importance to sustain internal innovation activities, which is in line with the open innovation paradigm. In detail, I refer to firms that buy external technologies.
However, I was wondering if and why companies are engaged in continuous technology acquisition. In other words, many companies have acquired at least one external solution. But, to what extent they continue to rely on technology acquisition after they have tried it for the first time? Do you have statistics saying something like "firms tend to acquire only one (or few) technology" or, conversely, "firms usually tend to continue to acquire technologies after that they have acquired the first one"?
Data collected through CIS strongly suggest that firms regularly rely on external information sources for innovation, and are also involved in innovation co-operation with various types of partners. There is a huge literature on these issues. For some data and a detailed list of references see, e.g. my paper entitled "Types of knowledge and diversity of business-academia collaborations: Implications for measurement and policy", available at RG.
Dear Havas,
thank you for your reply.
However, I am not looking for acquisition of diverse types of knowledge, in general, or breadth of knowledge sourcing.
I would like to be more precise on technology acquisition. That is, the inward of external technologies (e.g., buying a patent). It is not clear to me if there are differences in the tendency to acquire external inventions continuously or not.
In most high technology manufacturing areas, for example aerospace, automotive, competition drives technology. Much technology is developed in-house, however the supply chain is a rich source of technology and this is because suppliers tend to concentrate on a given set of commodities serving several customers and hence have better economics to develop the technology, and more new product introductions than a given customer to learn from. Hence in aerospace there are specialist suppliers for engines, landing gear, avionics etc., whilst in automotive, systems such as braking steering, transmissions, seating, and a proportion of electronic systems are led by the suppliers within the overall OEM development. This is not a new trend, it has been a part of such industries from the outset.
Such technologies tend to be used rather than acquired (the IP is build into the purchase price of the parts, or a per product licence cost is paid for software rather than the IP purchased outright). By building these external technologies into designs on a regular basis, there is a need to keep abreast of such changing technologies, and this, in turn, can lead to innovations within the OEM company that either exploit these technologies in new ways or build on them to create more advanced technologies.
Lorenzo, your question seems to be too general, in other words it implicitly assumes that firms behave in the same way, regardless of their size, internal (production, innovation and management) capabilities, overall business strategies, innovation strategies, sector, their role in value chains/ production and innovation system in those industries where networking is essential, etc., etc. We know for sure that firms are heterogeneous in many respects. Even in the same industry, e.g. in pharmaceuticals there are major differences between those firms that aim at developing original drugs, on the one hand, and those that produce and sell so-called generic drugs. David mentioned automotive industry. There we make a distinction between car manufacturers, T1, T2, and T3 suppliers. These are rather different firms in their characteristics mentioned in my first sentence.
In brief, there is no "yes or no" answer to your question, valid for all firms.
I recommend you to look up literature about absorptive capacity. Firms with high absorptive capactiy constantly are looking for external information valuable for them. The final goal of this process is to apply new assimilated and transformed knowledge for commercial purposes. Zahra & George (2002) would be a great reference.
I second some of the previous answer (e.g. importance of absorptive capacity) and would like to add that firms not only go beyond their internal boundaries to acquire technologies, but also to scan the environment. This is necessary to later on discover and then acquire external technologies. I would argue that while external acquisition of technologies is often ongoing there could be breaks (of course it depends also on the industry and firm); sensing on the other hand is (should) be more ongoing. I attached you one of my papers which discuss external knowledge acquisition and the sensing issue in the case of different types of external collaborations. Additionally, this is a theoretical book chapter from Grant, Phene, Almeida, which could be interesting for you:
P Almeida, A Phene, R Grant, (2003) “Innovation and knowledge management: Scanning, sourcing, and integration” Handbook of organizational learning and knowledge management, Blackwell Oxford
Firms are under continual pressure from shareholders and investors to post sustainable growth in profitability so they can expect to receive sustainable returns on their invested capital. So firms try to achieve this by two strategies - organically (through inventions and innovations) as well as inorganically (through acquisitions/mergers).
Dear Lorenzo,
NIH syndrome harms the process of acquiring external technologies and knowledge.
Please check our last publication about this.
Regards,
Article NOT-INVENTED-HERE SYNDROME AND INNOVATION PERFORMANCE: THE C...
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