The impact of alliances and internal R&D on the firm's innovation and financial performance

ABSTRACT This paper intends to understand the relationships among internal and external R&D, innovation performance and financial performance in Brazilian manufacturing firms by testing a model using data from 2,810 firms. The study achieves this objective. We detected a positive relationship between external R&D from strategic alliances and innovation performance. Internal R&D, on the other hand, did not influence innovation performance directly; however, it positively moderated the relationship between strategic alliances and innovation performance, corroborating with the absorptive capacity theory. Contrary to our expectations, innovation performance had a negative influence on future financial performance. This was caused by the two-year lag between the measurement of the proxies of these two constructs, which was not long enough to allow identifying an increasing in revenues from new products and services. However, it captured the negative effect of redirecting marketing and sales resources for innovation activities, such as internal R&D, and of management costs of strategic alliances.摘要 本研究旨在通过运用2810家巴西制造企业的数据集构建并检验模型，探析企业内部研发（Research and Development, R&D）、外部研发、创新绩效与财务绩效之间的内在关联，并达成了前述研究目标。研究发现，依托战略联盟开展的外部研发与创新绩效间呈显著正相关关系。相较而言，内部研发并未直接对创新绩效产生影响，但却对战略联盟与创新绩效的关联起到了正向调节作用，该发现与吸收能力理论相契合。与研究预期相悖的是，创新绩效对未来财务绩效产生了负向影响。这一现象源于两项构念的代理变量测量存在两年的时滞，该时长不足以捕捉新产品与服务带来的营收增长。但该测量周期足以捕捉到因将营销与销售资源重新配置至内部研发等创新活动，以及战略联盟管理成本所带来的负向效应。