Recent research on innovation management and knowledge transfer has demonstrated that industry knowledge collaboration and knowledge spillovers matter for innovation, but so does a firm's Research and Development (R&D). Conditional to a firm's R&D investment, this study makes a theoretical investigation into the role of two knowledge transfer strategies—industry coopetition and industry knowledge spillovers for a firm's innovation. Based on an analysis of a sample of 17,859 UK firms from 2002 to 2014, we demonstrated why and under what conditions firms will (a) invest in internal R&D, (b) engage in coopetition, and (c) access knowledge spillovers to introduce new to firm (incremental innovation) and new to market products (radical innovation). The results of this study demonstrate that firm managers who choose knowledge spillovers versus coopetition are likely to achieve radical vis-à-vis incremental innovation. Benefits from the coopetition can be achieved with low investment in R&D, while R&D is essential in recognizing the knowledge spillover for radical innovation. By deciding whether to deploy its costly R&D and access external knowledge via industry coopetition or spillovers, the firm is also making a concomitant decision about the type of innovative activity it will generate. Thus, a firm strategy for knowledge transfer and investing in knowledge internally is inextricably linked to a firm strategy involving the type of innovative output.

最近关于创新管理和知识转移的研究表明，行业知识协作和知识溢出对创新很重要，但公司的研发 (R&D) 也很重要。本研究以企业研发投入为条件，对产业合作和产业知识溢出这两种知识转移策略对企业创新的作用进行了理论探讨。基于对 2002 年至 2014 年 17,859 家英国公司样本的分析，我们证明了公司为何以及在什么条件下会 (a) 投资于内部研发，(b) 参与合作，以及 (c) 获取知识溢出以引入新的技术。坚定（渐进式创新）和新上市产品（激进式创新）。这项研究的结果表明，选择知识溢出而不是合作的企业管理者可能会实现激进的渐进式创新。合作的好处可以通过较低的研发投资来实现，而研发对于认识激进创新的知识溢出至关重要。通过决定是否部署成本高昂的研发并通过行业合作或溢出效应获取外部知识，该公司还对其将产生的创新活动类型做出了相应的决定。因此，知识转移和内部知识投资的企业战略与涉及创新产出类型的企业战略有着千丝万缕的联系。