This study aims to examine the effect on firms’ new product development (NPD) and significant product modification of knowledge interaction with local and non-local knowledge actors.,This study draws insights from the literature on external knowledge sources. The negative binomial regression is used to analyse the data of 245 sample food-processing establishments in Thailand.,Local knowledge actors play only limited roles in enhancing food-processing establishments’ product innovations. Only knowledge interaction with local universities and public research organisations helps enhance establishments’ ability to modify their products. For the NPD, significant sources of knowledge are non-local industrial actors.,This study adds new empirical evidence on knowledge sources for innovation of low-tech firms in less developed countries. It contributes new findings to an on-going debate on the importance of local vs non-local knowledge sources on firms’ innovativeness. It also contributes some implications for the Thai Government’s cluster-based innovation strategy.

中文翻译：

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低技术公司产品创新的本地和非本地知识来源：泰国食品加工行业的证据

本研究旨在探讨对公司新产品开发（NPD）的影响以及与本地和非本地知识参与者之间的知识交互的重大产品修改的影响。本研究从关于外部知识源的文献中得出见解。负二项式回归用于分析泰国245个食品加工企业的数据。地方知识参与者在增强食品加工企业的产品创新方面仅发挥有限的作用。只有与当地大学和公共研究组织的知识互动才能帮助企业改善产品的修改能力。对于NPD，重要的知识来源是非本地工业参与者。这项研究为欠发达国家的低技术企业创新的知识来源增加了新的经验证据。它为有关本地和非本地知识来源对公司创新能力的重要性的持续辩论提供了新发现。这也对泰国政府基于集群的创新战略产生了一些影响。