Abstract: External collaboration is important for incumbent firms to enlarge necessary new knowledge elements and recombination paradigm for innovation, while internal knowledge networks can affect its effectiveness. We distinguish two types of external collaborations, academic collaboration, and industry collaboration, and analyze how their effectiveness on innovation was affected by the structure of internal knowledge networks. Employing a dataset of 323 listed companies in the communication industry and pharmaceutical industry in China, from 2012 to 2017, we found that firms with external collaborations, particularly firms with more academic collaborations—have a higher innovation performance than their non-connected counterparts. Firm’s internal knowledge recombination potential, measured by the weighted clustering coefficient and average path length of the firm’s internal knowledge network, will weaken the impact of academic collaboration, but contribute to the impact of industry collaboration. A firm’s internal knowledge coordination cost, measured by average ties per inventor in the firm, can weaken the positive relationship between industry collaboration and firm innovation.

摘要： 外部研发合作有利于丰富企业的知识元素和组合范式进而影响其创新绩效，企业内部知识网络会影响其外部研发合作的效能。基于知识组合的视角探究不同类型企业外部研发合作，与大学/研究机构的合作（学研合作）以及与企业的合作（企业合作），对企业创新绩效的差异化影响，并进一步揭示企业内部知识网络特征（知识组合能力和知识协调成本）对上述影响的调节作用。通过对2012年—2017年中国计算机通信及电子设备制造业和医药制造业323家上市公司的数据分析，发现学研合作对企业创新绩效的促进作用大于企业合作；企业知识组合能力会抑制学研合作对企业创新绩效的积极影响，促进企业合作对企业创新绩效的积极影响；企业知识协调成本会减弱企业合作与企业创新绩效的正向关系，对学研合作与企业创新绩效关系的影响不显著。