This article links research on parallel search and joint R&D to contribute a portfolio perspective to the study of knowledge flows within interfirm R&D partnerships. In a longitudinal analysis of firms engaged in R&D partnerships relating to information technology between 1975 and 1999, we show that the size of a firm's R&D partnership portfolio and its share of novel partners both have an inverted U-shaped effect on the inflow of technological knowledge from the firm's R&D partners. We also show how these direct effects vary as a function of the level of technological uncertainty within the portfolio.
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