Innovate with whom? The bridging effect of organizational learning capability for knowledge-intensive SMEs

ABSTRACT With the advent of the knowledge economy, inbound open innovation for knowledge-intensive SMEs has attracted more and more attention. However, the distinctiveness between them and traditional SMEs in this process remains undiscussed. This paper investigates how different partnerships influence knowledge-intensive SMEs' innovative performance by demonstrating the organisational learning capability mechanism. Based on the survey data from 248 Chinese knowledge-intensive SMEs, this paper finds that both market-based and science-based partnerships play nonnegligible roles in knowledge-intensive SMEs' innovative performance, and organisational learning capability partially mediates these relationships. In addition, when the environmental turbulence increases, knowledge-intensive SMEs prefer science-based partnerships. The research results indicate that knowledge-intensive SMEs have different partner selection strategies for open innovation compared to traditional SMEs, which could be affected by the turbulence of the external environment. This study sheds light on the relationship between open innovation and the performance of knowledge-intensive SMEs.