Abstract: Building ties with Knowledge-intensive business services has been an important path for manufacturing firms to obtain service innovation resources. But present literatures discuss little about how ties diversity influences the service innovation performance of manufacturing firms. This study uses a sample of 203 manufacturing firms in Chongqing to examine ties diversity with Knowledge-intensive business services and service innovation performance, and how boundary-spanning search experience moderates these relationships. The empirical research results show that there is an inverse U -shaped relationship between organizational ties diversity and service innovation performance，but geographical ties diversity has only a linear effect on service innovation performance, rather than providing evidence of a curvilinear effect．In addition, we also find that boundary-spanning search experience moderate the inverse U-shaped relationship between organizational ties diversity and service innovation performance, while boundary-spanning search experience only positively and significantly moderates the effect of geographical ties diversity on service innovation performance . These findings contribute to the existing literatures on manufacturing firms’ service innovation, and also have practical implication for Chinese manufacturing firms’ strategy to building appropriate ties diversity with Knowledge-intensive business services., Building ties with Knowledge-intensive business services has been an important path for manufacturing firms to obtain service innovation resources. But present literatures discuss little about how ties diversity influences the service innovation performance of manufacturing firms. This study uses a sample of 203 manufacturing firms in Chongqing to examine ties diversity with Knowledge-intensive business services and service innovation performance, and how boundary-spanning search experience moderates these relationships. The empirical research results show that there is an inverse U -shaped relationship between organizational ties diversity and service innovation performance，but geographical ties diversity has only a linear effect on service innovation performance, rather than providing evidence of a curvilinear effect．In addition, we also find that boundary-spanning search experience moderate the inverse U-shaped relationship between organizational ties diversity and service innovation performance, while boundary-spanning search experience only positively and significantly moderates the effect of geographical ties diversity on service innovation performance . These findings contribute to the existing literatures on manufacturing firms’ service innovation, and also have practical implication for Chinese manufacturing firms’ strategy to building appropriate ties diversity with Knowledge-intensive business services.

Key words: manufacturing firms&rsquo, service innovation