Foreign knowledge spillovers and new product development speed in boundary-spanning teams: A sufficiency–necessity perspective on digital interoperability and collaborative conflict resolution capabilities

Foreign knowledge spillovers provide valuable inputs for innovation in cross-border business-to-business (B2B) collaborations, yet their contribution to faster new product development (NPD) depends on how boundary-spanning teams (BSTs) integrate and apply this knowledge. Leveraging the knowledge-based view and integrating sufficiency and necessity logics, we examine digital interoperability capability as a technological integration mechanism and collaborative conflict resolution capability as a relational boundary condition in translating foreign knowledge spillovers into faster NPD. Using time-lagged survey data from 338 BST managers and leaders in Ghanaian manufacturing firms, we test a moderated mediation model using PLS-SEM and NCA. The results show that foreign knowledge spillovers do not directly accelerate NPD speed but operate indirectly through digital interoperability. Particularly, exploratory additional findings indicate that digital interoperability exhibits an inverted U-shaped relationship with NPD speed, revealing diminishing returns at higher levels. Collaborative conflict resolution strengthens the foreign knowledge spillover–digital interoperability and digital interoperability–NPD speed relationships but dampens the direct foreign knowledge spillover–NPD speed relationship. These factors also emerge as necessary conditions for achieving higher NPD speed. The study extends the KBV by showing that translating interorganizational knowledge into NPD speed requires technological and relational capabilities that present both enabling and trade-off effects.