Does functional diversity in interfirm collaborations lead to innovation diversity? Firm‐level evidence from the Australian food industry

Research on the collaboration–innovation nexus emphasises that collaborations and innovation are multidimensional. Despite this emphasis, there is limited evidence on how firms' collaborative diversity affects their innovation diversity. This paper addresses this gap by examining the relationsh...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Australian journal of agricultural and resource economics 2022-07, Vol.66 (3), p.612-637
Main Authors: Azeem, Muhammad Masood, Fazal‐e‐Hasan, Syed, Gutiérrez, Leopoldo, Baker, Derek
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Australia
B2B collaborations
Collaboration
Companies
financial performance
Food industry
Food processing industry
Growth rate
innovation
Innovations
Longitudinal studies
panel data
poisson model
Saturation
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Research on the collaboration–innovation nexus emphasises that collaborations and innovation are multidimensional. Despite this emphasis, there is limited evidence on how firms' collaborative diversity affects their innovation diversity. This paper addresses this gap by examining the relationships between (i) a firm's functional diversity of collaboration (FDC) and innovation diversity, and (ii) innovation diversity and firm growth. We used longitudinal data from 738 Australian food firms, and our findings suggest that the positive relationship between FDC and innovation diversity reaches a point of saturation, beyond which additional collaboration negatively influences firms' innovation diversity. Moreover, innovation diversity depends on the motives behind alliance formation and the firm's focus on innovation. Finally, the association between innovation diversity and growth performance is heterogeneous across firms' conditional growth rate distribution.
ISSN:1364-985X
1467-8489
DOI:10.1111/1467-8489.12482