How does knowledge coupling affect exploratory and exploitative innovation? The chained mediation role of organisational memory and knowledge creation

The purpose of this study is to explore the effects of knowledge coupling, including complementary knowledge coupling and substitutive knowledge coupling, on exploratory and exploitative innovation. We use regression and bootstrapping methods with survey data of 229 Chinese technology firms to empirically test the proposed model. Our findings indicate that complementary knowledge coupling has a positive effect on both exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation. Substitutive knowledge coupling is positively related to exploitative innovation, while there is no evidence to show that substitutive knowledge coupling positively affects exploratory innovation. Furthermore, the relationships between knowledge coupling and exploratory and exploitative innovation are serially mediated by organisational memory and knowledge creation. These results suggest that a firm's innovation performance significantly depends on the alignment between different characteristic of knowledge coupling and innovation strategy. It also reveals the mechanism of how knowledge coupling affects exploratory and exploitative innovation by exploring the mediating roles of organisational memory and knowledge creation.