The importance of external knowledge acquisition for innovation by firms is well established. In particular, there has been an increasing focus on the two distinct modes of firms’ external search strategies, which have a differential effect on their learning and innovation: search breadth and depth. By applying organizational ambidexterity lens, we hypothesize that pursuing high levels of both external search strategies is beneficial to achieve a balance between exploitative and explorative innovation, which, in turn, has a positive impact on the firm’s innovation performance. We also hypothesize that, even among the firms that maintain high levels of both search strategies, firms with higher absorptive capacity better achieve a balance between both modes of innovation, thereby producing higher performance. The findings on a multi-industry sample of Koran manufacturing firms confirm our hypotheses and imply that it is essential for firms to develop capabilities for different modes of external search activities in conjunction with internal absorptive capacity for superior innovation performance.

Whether to have a similar or different strategy than firms in same industry is the fundamental question for firms that want to build a competitive advantage. Recent literature, such as the new institutional theory and the perspective of optimal distinctiveness, has emphasized the configuration of competing forces that make firms simultaneously similar by conforming to industry norms and different by implementing innovation, leading to high performance. The primary rationale is that firms can exploit their high status of conformity as a stock of capital to differentiate themselves when required. Upon this rationale, we conducted research to test the hypotheses for optimal distinctiveness in the strategies of manufacturing firms in Korea. The results show that Korean firms have higher performance when they are mutually involved in higher conformity and innovation. It also suggests that firms in the industry with high volatility have difficulties in managing optimal distinctiveness of strategic conformity with innovation.

With the advancement of network technology, wearable devices have drawn the attention as the next generation growth engine of ICT industry. China, although a follower in this industry, has recorded high growth rate over the several years and become the world's largest market. This study first defined the acceptance factors of wearable devices among Chinese consumers and empirically tested the relationship between these factors and consumer performance such as product satisfaction, brand loyalty, and purchase intention of other products. We adopted FEA model for the analysis and conducted a web-based online survey. Through the Chinese consumer research panel service, we collected 208 responses and analyzed structural equation modeling with Amos 22.0. The result of the study confirmed the compatibility, hedonic motivation, and subcultural appeal as key acceptance factors. It also revealed that the satisfaction of wearable device have positive impact on the brand loyalty. Academically, this study contributes to the understanding of chinese consumers adoption behaviors toward new technology-based products. Practically, this study provides insight to design effective communication strategy for the related industry.