Customer collaboration in new product development : the moderating impact of internal R&D efforts

In this study, we examine the moderating impact of internal R&D efforts on the relationship between customer collaboration and both, new-to-the-firm innovation performance and newto- the-market innovation performance. Conducting OLS regression analyses, supplemented with the Johnson-Neyman technique, on a sample of 305 firms, we observe that firms can benefit from customer collaboration in terms of new-to-the-firm innovation performance. In addition, we observe that firms can benefit from customer collaboration in terms of new-tothe- market innovation performance only when at least 22% of the employees are employed in order to support internal R&D activities. These findings have important theoretical and managerial implications in the field of open innovation.