Digital technology adoption and knowledge flows within firms: Can the Internet overcome geographic and technological distance?

Chris Forman; Nicolas van Zeebroeck

doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2018.10.021

doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2018.10.021

Digital technology adoption and knowledge flows within firms: Can the Internet overcome geographic and technological distance?

Chris Forman

23

,

Nicolas van Zeebroeck

13

Research Policy7.20

Volume: 48, Issue: 8, Pages: 103697 - 103697

Published: Oct 1, 2019

Abstract

Under what conditions does digital technology adoption increase cross location knowledge flows within firms? We investigate this question by studying the impact of adopting basic Internet access on cross-location knowledge flows within the same firm. We construct a large data set of Internet adoption and patent citations among dyadic pairs of firm-locations between 1992–1998. We find that when both locations in the pair adopt basic Internet...