Boundary-spanning Search,Absorptive Capacity,and Product Innovation

Open Innovation has brought manufacturing firms in China another round of challenges and opportunities.Increasing factor income and remuneration brought by rapid growth of economy has accelerated the rise of labor cost and business operating cost within China.Having lost the edge in low costs,labor-intensive industry started the process of transferring to Southeast Asian countries with lower labor cost,which has directly lead to the decline of manufacturing export in China.Demands for customized or innovative product has increased with the growing tendency of diversity of consumer needs.Manufacturing firms in China are turning into producing products with higher added value and technical content.Product innovation has become one of the most important approaches for manufacturing firms in China to adapt to market demands in rapid development and to achieve competitive advantage.Manufacturing firms are facing severe challenge of limited internal knowledge during the process of product innovation,while boundary-spanning search endows firm with ability of sensing new opportunities and new knowledge under the dynamic environment,though the comparative study that impact of boundary-spanning search on product innovation has not yet been conducted from two different dimensions:innovativeness and development speed.This paper indicates that technical and marketing boundary-spanning search may have different impact on different dimensions of product innovation.In addition,the synergistic effect or conflict effect between technical and marketing boundary-spanning search might also affect product innovation.Meanwhile,manufacturing firms should be equipped with seizing ability that identifies external knowledge and opportunities based on the dynamic ability framework proposed by Teece.Absorptive capacity is a key competence for manufacturing firms to identify,integrate,exploit,and convert external knowledge and opportunities into intellectual capital,which will be introduced into the process of product innovation.Therefore,this paper forwards the study of moderating effect of absorptive capacity on relation between boundary-spanning research and product innovation.Empirical findings based on 286 manufacturing firms from China suggest that the impacts of different boundary-spanning research on product innovation in different dimensions are inconsistent.Moreover,the interaction effect of two boundary-spanning search has negative impact on the development speed of product,while having no significant synergistic effect or conflict effect on product innovativeness.The study also indicates that the absorptive capacity has reinforced moderating effect on relation between them.