Dataset on knowledge states and stages and their impact on innovation performance

Decisive for firms’ innovation performance is the way they process differentiated and integrated knowledge. Differentiation has been argued to create specialization advantages and integration to enable common ground. Biased by the advantages of producing and maintaining common ground over specialization, scholars overlooked the merits of differentiation. We use a congruence-incongruence approach that investigates whether matching-unmatching stages of knowledge differentiation and integration leads to different innovation performance. Our conceptualization proposes that matching stages of differentiation and integration (congruence) is more conducive of higher innovation performance compared to directing attention to one over the other (incongruence). We find support for this claim. Results show that a mismatch of knowledge states is conducive of lower levels of innovation performance. Our study proposes that awareness of the congruence and incongruence between the stages (producing vs maintaining) of different knowledge states (differentiation vs integration) plays a critical role for innovation research.

企业处理差异化知识与整合性知识的方式，对其创新绩效具有决定性影响。既有研究表明，知识差异化可催生专业化优势，而知识整合则能构建共同认知基础。受“构建与维持共同认知基础优于专业化”这一认知偏向的影响，过往学者忽视了知识差异化的价值。本研究采用一致性-非一致性研究范式（congruence-incongruence approach），探究知识差异化与知识整合的阶段匹配与否是否会带来差异化的创新绩效。本研究的概念框架提出，相较于仅侧重二者之一的非一致性（incongruence）状态，知识差异化与整合阶段的匹配（一致性，congruence）更有助于提升创新绩效。本研究的实证结果验证了这一假设，研究显示知识状态的不匹配会导致创新绩效水平下降。本研究指出，厘清不同知识状态（差异化vs整合）对应阶段（知识产生vs知识维持）之间的一致性与非一致性关系，对创新研究具有关键的学术意义。