Managerial interpretation of environment dynamism, nonlocal search trajectories, and ties with service intermediaries

Firms may no longer rely only on internally generated innovation within today´s context of globalization, industry convergence, and rapid technology change. Built on managerial interpretation of external environment and innovation search literature, this paper suggests that managers interpreting external environment as higher levels of dynamism tend to proceed more with nonlocal supply-side and exploratory geographic innovation search, whereas the interpretation as lower levels tends to motivate managers to involve more in nonlocal demand-side and exploitative geographic innovation search. Importantly, ties with service intermediaries provide firms with an alternative to broaden their external search scope, thereby reducing their reliance on those other nonlocal search trajectories.