Absorptive capacity, coopetition and generation of product innovation: contrasting Italian and Portuguese manufacturing firms

This paper focuses on the effects of absorptive capacity and coopetition on the generation of product innovation, by making use of a sample of manufacturing firms, both high-tech and medium-low-tech, from Italy and Portugal. For this purpose, we use two datasets of 4,912 Italian manufacturing firms and 3,660 Portuguese manufacturing firms that participated in the European Community Innovation Survey (CIS) 2010. A logit analysis is conducted for high-tech firms and medium-low-tech firms and the results reveal that for both types of firms, the absorptive capacity enablers of Italian manufacturing firms, such as internal R&D, external R&D and employee expertise have a positive and significant effect on the generation of product innovation. In addition, the establishment of coopetition relationships with Italian competitors denotes a positive and significant effect on the generation of product innovation. For the Portuguese manufacturing firms, both high-tech and medium-low-tech, we find that the absorptive capacity enablers mentioned above have a positive and significant effect on the generation of product innovation. In addition, the formation of coopetition relationships with Portuguese competitors also presents a positive and significant effect on the generation of product innovation.