The dual role of external corporate venturing in technological exploration

Innovating firms can not only explore new technologies from its innovation partners, but also explore new technologies from the organizations to which the innovating firm has had no prior relationships. Prior studies have mostly focused on a firm's exploratory learning from its venturing partners ("exploration from partners" or "EFP"). There has been little insight on how external corporate venturing may affect the exploratory learning beyond the venturing partnerships ("exploration beyond partners" or "EBP"). We claim that prior venturing relations have a dual role: First, the innovation firm can learn from knowledge embedded in its partners. Second, it can also learn from through its partners about knowledge developed by other firms or organizations with whom the innovating firm had no external venturing relations before. In this paper, we are interested how external corporate venturing partnerships plays a dual role and may help innovating firms exploring new technologies through EFP and EBP.