Search activities for innovation: An attention-based view

Previous studies have not fully explored how firms' search behaviours may be heterogeneous when managers' attention for innovations is different, in turn, influence innovative competence. We bridge this gap by integrating an attention-based view (ABV) to study firms' knowledge search behaviours for innovation. Attention-based theories of the firm suggest that managerial attention is the most precious resource of an organization and the decision to allocate attention to particular activities is a key to explain why some firms are able to both adapt to changes in their external environment and to introduce new products and processes. In response to this theory, we collect a longitudinal patent data of 26 major LCD manufacturers from 1980 to 2001 for empirical study and find two insights. First, firms with complementary attention when searching knowledge will correlate negatively to domain impact. Second, firms using explorative attention when searching knowledge will correlate positively to domain impact and overall impact.