Firms’ innovation objectives and knowledge acquisition strategies

External partnerships play an important role in firms’ acquisition of the knowledge inputs to innovation. Such knowledge acquisition may be interactive - involving exploration and mutual learning - or non-interactive - involving exploitative activity and learning by only one party. Here, we consider how firms’ innovation objectives influence their choice of interactive and/or non-interactive knowledge search. We conduct a comparative analysis for Spain and the UK, which have contrasting innovation eco-systems and regulation burdens. Three empirical results emerge. First, we find strong support for complementarity between non-interactive and interactive knowledge search. Second, we find that where firms have innovation objectives relating to product or service improvement, they are more likely to establish non-interactive search strategies. Third, the innovation objective of reducing environmental impact is significantly related to both, interactive and non-interactive knowledge acquisition strategies. This is likely related to the increasing awareness of the need to promote an agenda based on sustainable growth.