Technological proximity and recombinative innovation in the alternative energy field

Recombination of knowledge elements has been recognized as important innovation activities. This study aims to develop a new measurement of recombinative innovation and firstly explores its antecedents at the country-dyad level. We analyze 41,007 US alternative energy patents granted between 1976 and 2012. Based on multi-source data and longitudinal design, Quadratic Assignment Procedure (QAP) model results indicate that two countries’ technological proximity (TP) takes an inverted U-shaped relationship with their recombinative innovation (RI), which means that TP could raise the potential of joint recombination, but should not become too high because of great knowledge homogenization. Furthermore, we test two types of distances (i.e., cultural and geographical) as moderators of the relationship between TP and RI. Cultural distance negatively moderates the relationship between TP and RI, but moderating role of geographical distance is not supported in this research. The findings of this study, besides having implications for management and policy, have implications on the research of recombinative innovation, inter-national collaboration and partner selection strategy.