Make or Buy to innovate in the Software sector

MORERO, HERNÁN ALEJANDRO; ORTIZ, PABLO; WYSS, FEDERICO

Revista Pymes, Innovación y Desarrollo

Red Pymes

Año: 2014 vol. 2 p. 79 - 99

In the context of profound economic growth that has beentaking place in Latin American countries, the extent of innovation in high technology sectors such as KnowledgeIntensive Business Services (KIBS), is considered fundamental to build a virtuous developing path. In this sense, successful innovation in businessdepends on the development and integration of new knowledge in the innovationprocess. This paper analyzes the existence of complementarity between internaland external sources of knowledge for innovation activities in firms from thesoftware industry of Argentina,taking account of the limited treatment of these matters in studies of innovation of these sectors inemerging economies. The theoretical framework is grounded on the Makeand Buy literature, innovation studies and KIBS literature; and the econometric tools involves a group of estimates of the role of innovation (Ordered Probit,Tobit, OLS and Probit). The results allow us to state the existence ofcomplementary relations between internal and external knowledge sources, regardless the regressionmodel considered, which underline the robustnessof the quantitative exercise.