Does broader mean more general? Decomposing the effect of knowledge breadth on R&D and spillover of generic technology

Purpose In the context of collaborative research and development (R&D), multi-actor participation and multi-resource integration of technological knowledge has become the mainstream paradigm for the R&D and spillover of industry generic technology (GT). As GT's core characteristics, “fundamentality” and “externality,” make differential requests on knowledge bases regarding the R&D and spillover of GT (SGT). Knowledge breadth can enhance the generality of technology. The purpose of this paper is to integrate “generic technology R&D” and “generic technology spillover” into a single study, and try to solve the theoretical problem of “whether broader mean more general?” Design/methodology/approach This paper collects and collates the patent data from the two patent databases of Derwent and SooPAT, and then makes an empirical analysis of the patent data collected by the authors with the data analysis software Stata. Findings Taking 352 strategic emerging firms in China as the sample, this paper examined the effects of general knowledge breadth (GKB) and specific knowledge breadth (SKB) on the R&D and SGT. The authors concluded that both general and SKB have a positive effect on the R&D of GT (RGT), and the latter has a greater effect. There is a significant inverted U-shaped relationship between SKB and SGT. Originality/value The theoretical contributions of this paper are as follows. GT can effectively link different technologies and knowledge fields (Gambardella and Giarratana, 2013; Appio et al. , 2017a, b). Therefore, existing studies regard the role of knowledge breadth on the R&D and SGT as an existing hypothesis. This paper challenges such hypothesis in two ways. First, this paper divides knowledge breadth into “general knowledge breadth” and “specific knowledge breadth” in response to the insufficient division of knowledge breadth in previous research, although some existing studies have examined the antecedents of the R&D and SGT from the perspective of R&D and SGT. Thus, the authors define GKB as the scope of context-free knowledge and SKB as the scope of context-specific knowledge, both of which shows differential nature, source and application. Second, this paper decomposes the effect of knowledge breadth on RGT, as well as on SGT, basing on distinguishing the SKB from GKB. Existing research reaches a consensus of the positive role of knowledge breadth, no matter on RGT or SGT (e.g. Schmidt et al. , 2016; Appio et al. , 2017a, b). Yet, such hypothesis ignores the refinement and decomposition of “knowledge breadth” in the research field of R&D and SGT, which is essential in promoting the development of GT theory. In this paper, the authors find that these two types of knowledge breadths play different roles in the RGT, and especially SKB plays a double-edged sword effect on the SGT.