R&D, Coopetition, Knowledge Spillovers and Implications for Innovation

Recent research on innovation management and strategy has demonstrated that coopetition and knowledge spillover matter for innovation, but so does a firm's own Research and Development (R&D). Conditional to a firm's own R&D investment, this study makes a theoretical investigation into the role of two knowledge sourcing strategies --- coopetition and intra-industry knowledge spillovers for a firm's innovation and imitation. Based on an analysis of a matched sample of 17,859 UK firms during 2002-2014, we demonstrated why and under what conditions firms will a) invest in internal R&D, b) engage in coopetition, and c) access knowledge spillovers.