Innovation Through Boundary Spanning: The Role of IT in Enabling Knowledge Flows Across Technological and Geographical Boundaries

Abstract

Innovation is considered the engine for firm growth. Especially innovations, through recombining seemingly unrelated knowledge streams, can have groundbreaking impact and lead to sustained competitive advantage. To generate such innovation, firms often need to go beyond their existing technological or geographical boundaries to identify and integrate novel knowledge elements. This article refers to firms' knowledge activities of drawing upon distant knowledge i.e., knowledge from dissimilar technological domains or distant geographical regions to create novel technological solutions, as innovation through boundary spanning. Aiming to investigate the roles of information technology IT in facilitating innovation through boundary spanning, we collected data from the pharmaceutical industry over a six-year period to test the research model. The data analysis results indicate that IT supports boundary-spanning activities in firm innovation and different IT-enabled knowledge capabilities affect boundary-spanning innovation differently.