As innovation is often created in networks, a company’s business partners influence its innovative outcome. Although many studies investigate innovation networks as a means to explore and exploit external knowledge, virtually no research has focused on the characteristics of external partners – in particular their innovativeness. This study considers axial and lateral corporate partners and investigates the differential impact of the partners’ innovativeness on a company’s knowledge stocks (market, technological, organizational, process, and product knowledge).
Drawing on the literature on inter-organizational networks and using survey data from the manufacturing industry, the results extend theory by revealing that not only relationships with partners but also their properties – partner innovativeness – are important for a company’s knowledge stock. In essence our results suggest that the innovativeness of a firm’s axial and lateral partners positively yet diversely influences its various knowledge stocks.