The Organization of the Knowledge Base and Inventive Performance

Beyond diversity and size, this chapter is interested in the impact of the organization of a firm’s knowledge base on its knowledge-creation capacity. The organization as a knowledge base is evaluated by the level of coherence and cohesion depending on the complementary or similar nature of the relations among knowledge elements. Drawing on a statistical analysis of patent data from 1968 to 2002 in the semiconductor industry, the results suggest that coherence makes a positive contribution to inventive capabilities, while cohesion has the opposite impact. However, cohesion is found to be beneficial for knowledge creation when invention relies on the exploration of new combinations.