Understanding Firms' Technology Sourcing Strategy: How is it Related to Complementary Assets and the Hiring of New Inventors

Abstract

In the dissertation, I study how the firms’ external technology sourcing strategies are related to their position in and the development of their capabilities. The analyses focus on the US manufacturing sectors based on comprehensive survey data or archival data on patenting firms and use regression analysis and causal inference to test a series of hypotheses. The main conclusions include: (1) Firms are more likely to focus on internal innovation if they possess valuable complementary assets (trademarks), but are likely to pursue external technology sourcing when they have the assets and are entering new markets. (2) As firms entering new markets and rely on external innovation, they often make changes and redeploy their existing complementary assets. (3) If they cannot hire from externally (thus cannot obtain the new technology and technical capabilities), they will rely more on external technology sourcing, and mostly through acquisition which brings both new technology and technical capabilities.