Firms’ innovative capabilities and performance increasingly rely on successful search and integration of internal and external knowledge. To this end, firms engage in various open innovation relationships, aiming to create and capture value in multi-actor contexts. This can give rise to a “paradox of openness” due to the contradictory role of knowledge as a key resource that creates value when shared, but also as a source of appropriability challenges. We explore the concept of a “paradox within a paradox;” the knowledge-leveraging paradox embedded within the paradox of openness. We integrate a knowledge-based view with paradox theory and develop a conceptual model to pinpoint core knowledge-related transferability and exposure tensions. We then show how these tensions are inversely moderated by innovation-related knowledge ambiguity. This ambiguity amplifies transferability tensions by making the knowledge more difficult to transfer and integrate across organizational boundaries, while relieving exposure tensions for the same reasons. We discuss potential solutions for resolving these core knowledge-related tensions by identifying separation and restructuring mechanisms that can facilitate simultaneous knowledge transfer and alleviate exposure hazards.

企业的创新能力和绩效越来越依赖于对内部和外部知识的成功搜索和集成。为此，公司参与各种开放式创新关系，旨在在多参与者环境中创造和获取价值。由于知识既是共享时创造价值的关键资源，又是专有性挑战的根源，因此知识的矛盾作用可能会导致“开放悖论”。我们探索“悖论之内的悖论”的概念；嵌入在开放性悖论中的知识杠杆悖论。我们将基于知识的观点与悖论理论相结合，并开发了一个概念模型来查明与知识相关的核心知识的可传递性和暴露压力。然后，我们展示了与创新相关的知识歧义如何逆转缓解了这些压力。这种歧义性通过使知识更难以跨组织边界进行转移和整合，而同时由于相同的原因缓解了暴露压力，从而扩大了可转移性的压力。我们讨论了通过确定分离和重组机制来解决这些与知识相关的核心紧张关系的潜在解决方案，这些分离和重组机制可促进同时进行的知识转移和减轻暴露风险。