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| The Influence of External R&D Cooperation Breadth on New Product Development Performance:A Moderated Mediation Model |
| Xin Chong,Zhang Meiqi,Wu Yiwen |
| （School of Business Administration, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110167, China） |
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Abstract With the shortening of the new product development cycle, it is difficult for firms to maintain their advantages in the fierce market competition just by relying on internal resources to carry out innovation activities. More and more firms are engaged in partnerships with external organizations such as upstream and downstream firms in the supply chain, universities and research institutes to acquire complementary knowledge and technology to cope with the rapidly changing market environment. R&D collaboration is cross-organizational, cross-domain and highly complex, which can significantly affect new product development. Existing studies have different perspectives on external cooperation, which lead to inconsistent research conclusions. Some studies point out that the wider the scope of R&D cooperation, the more diversified external knowledge firms can acquire, which is conducive to the improvement of new product development performance. Some studies also point out that extensive external participants have an inverted U-shaped impact on new product development performance. In addition, existing research has not paid enough attention to the complexity of R&D cooperation network in the background of open innovation, which leads to poor application of R&D cooperation in complex innovation network. Therefore, the impact of external R&D cooperation breadth on new product development performance will be the sticking point that this article focuses on, that is, how market breadth and research breadth of external R&D collaboration affect new product development performance, and whether the influence will be different for firms when the similarity degree of knowledge base is different.#br#Based on the characteristics of wide distribution of external partners, this study selected 160 Chinese listed manufacturing firms from 2010 to 2018 from the perspectives of market breadth and research breadth, and the samples are from 160 companies in five industries with a total of 1 440 observations. State15.0 was used to test the hypothesis, and ordinary least squares multiple linear regression was used to analyze the relationship between market breadth, research breadth, network learning, knowledge base homogeneity and new product development performance.#br#The results show that there is a positive correlation between the breadth of external R&D cooperation and new product development performance. Both the breadth of market and research positively affect new product development performance, and research breadth has a more significant impact. Network learning has a partial mediating role in the impact mechanism of external R&D cooperation breadth on new product development performance. Knowledge base homogeneity positively regulates the relationship between external R&D cooperation breadth and network learning, both in market breadth and research breadth.#br#This study deepens the overall cognition of the breadth of external R&D cooperation, discussing the influence of external R&D cooperation on new product development performance from the two dimensions of market breadth and research breadth. It enriches the research on the antecedent conditions affecting new product development performance, and provides theoretical support for firms to rationally select external cooperation partners. It helps to explain why there are inconsistent conclusions about the impact of external R&D collaboration on new product development performance in existing studies. In addition, by constructing a theoretical model, this study explores the mediating role of e-learning between the breadth of external R&D cooperation and new product development performance, as well as the moderating role of knowledge base homogeneity. Existing studies focus on the direct impact of external R&D cooperation on new product development performance, but the internal mechanism of how external R&D cooperation acts on new product development performance is not discussed enough, and the complexity of external R&D cooperation network is ignored. The study results reveal the mechanism of external R&D cooperation breadth on new product development performance, complementing the shortcomings of previous studies. It also enriches the theoretical research on network learning, and lays a theoretical foundation for further exploration for the mechanism of knowledge base homogeneity. Research provides theoretical guidance for firms to develop new products. Firms should implement the open innovation strategy and take the initiative to establish cooperative relationships with different types of organizations, so as to acquire rich knowledge, reduce research and development costs and improve innovation ability.#br#
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Received: 08 January 2021
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