Successful eco‐innovators: Exploring the association between open inbound knowledge strategies and the performance of eco‐innovative firms
研究了西班牙食品饮料行业中，开放式内向知识策略（如合作者多样性）与生态创新企业销售增长绩效的关联，发现外部知识来源广度与产品过程联合创新正向影响高增长，但最成功企业存在倒U型关系。
Abstract The main purpose of this paper is to analyse the association between open inbound knowledge strategies and the performance of eco‐innovative firms in the food and beverage industry. We propose a mixed framework based on the eco‐innovation literature and the open innovation approach. We consider the characteristics in a traditional sector based upon a resource‐based perspective. Three types of firms are distinguished in terms of their sales growth in the Spanish food industry from the least to the most successful eco‐innovators. Using multinomial logistic regression models, it is shown that the diversity of collaborators (breadth of external sources of knowledge) and joint adoption of product and process eco‐innovations are positively associated with the probability of achieving high sales growth. Moreover, we find an inverted U‐shaped relationship between the breadth of the external search and firm performance, but only for the group of the most successful firms. Moreover, operational flexibility, knowledge‐based capabilities and company size are also positively related to the group of successful eco‐innovators.