We investigate the role of search strategy in shaping firms' innovation performance. Firms use a wide range of external actors and sources to help them achieve and sustain innovation. In particular, the extension (breadth) and the relevance (depth) of such sources determine firms' ability to extract and exploit knowledge and new ideas and, thus, to be innovative. Using a sample of firms in a regional context active in R&D, we built separate measures of breadth and depth for local (on a regional scale) and global (outside the regional context) search. This allows us to investigate whether localized or global knowledge spillovers are in place. We find that a wider set of partners increases coordination costs, while greater depth in search strategies contributes to innovation. We find that a more diversified search strategy at the local level (greater breadth of search) results in significant payoffs in terms of innovation, while diversifying the partnership with Italian partners has a smaller, although still positive, effect. In contrast, the benefits of depth of innovation are greatest at the global level. In addition, a broader set of information sources for R&D projects has a significant positive effect on innovation. Finally, firms that resort to R&D subsidies are less innovative.

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This paper investigates the impact of migration on innovation networks between regions and foreign countries. It posits that immigrants (emigrants) act as a transnational knowledge bridge between the host (home) regions and their origin (destination) countries, thus facilitating their co-inventorship networks. It also argues that the social capital of both the hosting and the moving communities reinforces such a bridging role, along with language commonality and migrants' human capital. Focusing on Spain, as a country that hosted an intense process of migration over the past two decades, patent data are combined with national data on residents and electors abroad and a gravity model is applied to the coinventorship between Spanish provinces (NUTS-3 regions) and a number of foreign countries. Both immigrants and emigrants affect the kind of innovation networking at stake. The social capital of both the moving and the hosting communities actually moderates this impact positively. The effect of migration is stronger for more skilled migrants and with respect to non-Spanish-speaking countries, pointing to a language-bridging role of migrants. Policy implications are drawn accordingly.

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