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Abstract
The flow of goods and services among organizations in buyer-supplier ties represents a network to support knowledge recombination. How firms’ buyer-supplier network positions translate into successful knowledge recombinations remains underexplored. We examine how networks around space system integrators (e.g., NASA, Raytheon) facilitate recombination of space technologies into non-space applications. The NASA Authorization Act of 2010 increased firms' propensity to use space technologies in non-space patents by enabling commercial buyer-supplier ties. Information flows through these ties helped customers and suppliers of space integrators to develop non-space patents based on space patents, and this effect was the strongest for tier-2 (indirect) and opposed to tier-1 (direct) customers or suppliers of space system integrators. We contribute to network research by showing conditions under which knowledge recombination happens within buyer-supplier networks. Our results show that is not enough to consider only information exchange within buyer-supplier network as the sole determinant of knowledge recombination. Rather, we also need to take into account the nature of technological artifacts that are being exchanged and recombined.
