Knowledge sources and recombination capabilities in developing new convergent products

Abstract

Recent surge in technological convergences has generated great interests from scholars, managers and policy-makers. Yet, few literatures have investigated firm-specific factors behind developing convergent products. This research has empirically analysed the role of firms' knowledge recombination capabilities and external collaborations in developing convergent products by using a survey data from 858 Korean firms. The findings suggest that presence of interdisciplinary employees and the strong commitment of CEOs are among the important knowledge recombination capabilities for developing convergent products. When compared to other types of collaboration, the inter-firm collaboration turned out to be the most effective in developing convergent products. We suggest that firms should understand that knowledge generations are becoming more interdisciplinary and employees with interdisciplinary research background are an important enabler of knowledge recombination. We suggest that policy-maker should continue to allocate its resources in supporting inter-disciplinary research programmes.