Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze to what extent spending on innovation activities and collaboration at the industry level affects the relationship between firm innovation and performance. Design/methodology/approach A conceptual model was proposed and empirically tested using multiple linear regression. The data were obtained from the Community Innovation Survey 2012, composing a sample of 890 Italian manufacturing firms. Findings The results provided full support for the positive moderating effect of intra-industry innovation spending and partial support for the positive moderating effect of intra-industry collaboration, both regarding the relationship between firm innovation spending and performance. Knowledge spillovers derived from intra-industry innovation spending and intra-industry collaboration affect firm performance. While this finding corroborates other studies that have found that the intra-industry R&D spending influences firms’ innovation and performance, it also contributes to improve the understanding about the complementarity of internal innovation activities and knowledge spillovers. Originality/value This study contributes to theory by filling a gap concerning the complementarity of internal innovation activities and the effect of knowledge spillovers to improve firm performance. Our findings suggested that intra-industry openness to collaboration and innovation spending, as proxies of knowledge spillovers, plays an important role in complementing firm level innovative efforts, even in the case of firms that spend less on innovation and have a lower degree of collaboration. This is especially relevant for small and medium enterprises, which can take advantage of access to the necessary information to overcome their internal resource constraints for R&D and innovation. The originality of these findings adds value in terms of furthering the understanding of this phenomenon.

中文翻译：

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行业创新支出和开放合作是企业绩效的杠杆

目的本文的目的是分析行业层面的创新活动和协作支出在多大程度上影响了企业创新与绩效之间的关系。设计/方法/方法提出了一个概念模型，并使用多元线性回归进行了经验测试。数据来自“ 2012年社区创新调查”，其中包括890家意大利制造公司的样本。结果研究结果为企业内部创新支出的积极调节作用提供了全力支持，而对于企业内部创新支出和绩效之间的关系，则部分支持了行业内部合作的正向调节作用。行业内创新支出和行业内合作产生的知识溢出影响公司绩效。尽管这一发现证实了其他研究，这些研究发现行业内研发支出会影响企业的创新和绩效，但它也有助于增进对内部创新活动和知识溢出互补性的理解。独创性/价值本研究通过填补内部创新活动的互补性以及知识溢出对提高公司绩效的影响方面的空白，为理论做出了贡献。我们的研究结果表明，行业内对协作和创新支出的开放性，作为知识溢出的代理，在补充企业层面的创新努力中也起着重要作用，即使在创新方面花费较少且协作程度较低的企业也是如此。这对于中小企业尤其重要，可以利用获取必要信息的优势来克服其内部资源对研发和创新的限制。这些发现的独创性在进一步了解这一现象方面增加了价值。