The role of breadth and depth of openness in explaining innovation performance in a regional context

We investigate the role of search strategy in shaping firms’ innovation performance. Firms use a wide range of external actors and sources to help them achieve and sustain innovation. In particular, the extension (breadth) and the relevance (depth) of such sources determine firms’ ability to extract and exploit knowledge and new ideas and, thus, to be innovative. Using a sample of firms in a regional context active in R&D, we built separate measures of breadth and depth for both local (on a regional scale) and global (outside the regional context) search. This allows us to investigate whether localized or global knowledge spillovers are in place. We find that a wider set of partners increases the coordination costs, while greater depth in search strategies contributes to introducing innovation.