Previous studies on open innovation and strategic management have emphasized the positive impact of external knowledge on firms' innovation performance. However, given that external knowledge is widely distributed across a myriad of heterogeneous sources, it presents challenges for both the openness strategy and knowledge accessibility. When designing a firm's openness strategy, the heterogeneity of these external sources must be considered, choosing a form of openness that aligns with the attributes of the targeted sources. The question remains, which form of openness aligns best with which knowledge source and leads to improved innovation performance? Our regression analysis, based on a sample of 3294 German firms from the Mannheim Innovation Panel (MIP) in 2013 and 2017, reveals that utilizing a search strategy toward market sources of knowledge influences innovation performance more positively than a collaboration strategy. Conversely, only collaboration with science-based sources of knowledge has a significant positive impact on innovation performance. We further delve into the implications of these observed results and describe the practical implications for innovation managers.

以往关于开放式创新和战略管理的研究都强调外部知识对企业创新绩效的积极影响。然而，鉴于外部知识广泛分布在无数异构来源中，这对开放策略和知识可及性提出了挑战。在设计公司的开放战略时，必须考虑这些外部来源的异质性，选择符合目标来源属性的开放形式。问题仍然是，哪种形式的开放最适合哪种知识源，并能提高创新绩效？我们的回归分析基于 2013 年和 2017 年曼海姆创新小组 (MIP) 的 3294 家德国公司样本，研究表明，利用市场知识源搜索策略比协作策略更能积极地影响创新绩效。相反，只有与基于科学的知识来源的合作才能对创新绩效产生显着的积极影响。我们进一步深入研究这些观察结果的含义，并描述对创新管理者的实际影响。