The impact of external technology acquisition on enterprise innovation performance: the moderating effect of geographical distance

Enterprises often acquire technologies from external sources which are geographically dispersed. Although previous literatures have discussed the role of external technology acquisition (ETA) in enterprises’ innovation performance, how innovation is affected by the breadth and depth of ETA is less investigated, and little is known about how geographical distance (GD) is involved. Therefore, this paper first analyses the relationship between the breadth, depth of ETA and enterprises’ innovation performance with patent transaction data of listed manufacturing enterprises in China. Then we further investigate how GD moderates the relationship. Results show that both the breadth and depth of ETA positively affect enterprises’ innovation performance. GD has no moderating effect on the relationship between the breadth of ETA and enterprises’ innovation performance, but negatively moderates the relationship between the depth of ETA and enterprises’ innovation performance. Our results have implications for enterprises’ ETA strategy.