External knowledge access versus internal knowledge protection: A necessary trade-off?

This paper addresses a specific tension that lies at the heart of the external knowledge sourcing phenomenon, that between accessing external knowledge and using strategic mechanisms to protect internal knowledge. We focus on the interaction between the two approaches, arguing that strategic knowledge protection pursued in combination with a strategy of access to external knowledge will negatively affect innovation performance. We further suggest that this negative interaction effect will transpire only under certain circumstances, depending on the approach used to access external knowledge. We explore the relationship between strategic protection and external knowledge sourcing by comparing inter-organizational relationships with private and public entities. Our data set consists of a large number of questionnaire responses to the UK Community Innovation Survey. We receive broad support for our arguments.