A Knowledge Recombination Perspective of Innovation: Review and New Research Directions

Abstract

A useful theoretical lens for understanding innovation in the strategy and entrepreneurship literatures is knowledge recombination. According to a recombination logic, innovations come about by recombining knowledge components, each of which is associated with a core scientific or technological concept. Interactions among a set of recombined components give rise to new meanings and functions that become the basis of an innovation. The singular focus on the components of knowledge underlying an innovation makes knowledge recombination stand out from other theoretical approaches. The rapid growth in research utilizing a recombination logic suggests that the time is ripe for stepping back and assessing its key insights. Therefore, this review provides a framework for a recombination perspective and considers how the literature using a recombination approach has progressed over time, including identification of key features of knowledge components, influences on how components are recombined, and the outcomes of recombination. Finally, a number of new directions for research are proposed.

Breakthrough invention and problem complexity: Evidence from a quasi‐experiment

“…Through an active trial-and-error process, inventors learn about previously neglected or misconceived knowledge couplings in unfamiliar contexts (Gavetti & Levinthal, 2000;Kneeland et al, 2020). Updating the coupling potential of new, unfamiliar knowledge may expand inventors' overall reference frame for knowledge recombination by breaking down cognitive inertia (West & Iansiti, 2003;Xiao, Makhija, & Karim, 2021). In particular, 10 We also acknowledge that variance in the details of knowledge recombination revealed by a breakthrough invention and inventors' motivation to understand that recombination can be important boundary conditions.…”

“…Through an active trial‐and‐error process, inventors learn about previously neglected or misconceived knowledge couplings in unfamiliar contexts (Gavetti & Levinthal, 2000; Kneeland et al, 2020). Updating the coupling potential of new, unfamiliar knowledge may expand inventors' overall reference frame for knowledge recombination by breaking down cognitive inertia (West & Iansiti, 2003; Xiao, Makhija, & Karim, 2021). In particular, ongoing experimentation may inadvertently introduce inventors to remote knowledge (Arts & Fleming, 2018; Kneeland et al, 2020; Ocasio, Rhee, & Milner, 2020), which may help them to sense additional knowledge coupling opportunities that may advance a breakthrough invention in new settings.…”

Effects of inventive capabilities on new product development performance: the knowledge combination view

“…Prior studies agree that how a firm utilizes its knowledge matters in the NPD process (Frankort, 2016;Caner and Tyler, 2015;Li and Yu, 2021). As inventing is regarded as a process of knowledge combination (Yayavaram and Ahuja, 2008;Fleming, 2001;Savino et al, 2017;Xiao et al, 2021), the second research question naturally rises:…”

Investigating Company’s Technical Development Directions Based on Internal Knowledge Inheritance and Inventor Capabilities: The Case of Samsung Electronics

“…The embodied knowledge in the nodes in the last layer could be divided into two types: one is from the internal knowledge flows that are inherited from the ancestor inventions of the company, and the other is the external knowledge from outside the company. Based on the knowledge recombination theory [67][68][69][70][71][72][73], the injected external knowledge is often regarded as the main source of innovation, and so the external knowledge injected to the last nodes can be the signal or major characteristics of the future technologies. Our empirical study in Section 4.3.1 also supports this point: almost half of new emerging CPCs in the main paths have presented in the external citation to their cited nodes in the last layer.…”