The impacts of intellectual protection and R&D collaborations on firm-level innovations: the moderating role of internal funding

Investments in research and development (R&D) and innovations are proven to be vital catalysts for the successful transition into knowledge-based economies. Despite the growing importance attached to innovations and R&D, they have yet to receive enough scholarly attention in developing countries. This research aims to examine whether intellectual protection and innovation collaborations influence R&D and technological innovations. The empirical results involving 549 firms revealed that trademarks positively and marginally influence technological innovations but not R&D. The findings also revealed that domestic and international innovation collaborations with other firms and universities have a positive marginal effect on both technological innovations and R&D. The results also show that firms’ internal funds significantly moderate the relationship between intellectual protection, technological innovations, and R&D. The main implication from our finding is that Ghanaian firms should consider investing in intellectual protection and forging collaborations with domestic and foreign firms and universities to increase their innovation performance and competitiveness.This research uses insights from the systemic perspective of innovation to examine how firms’ open innovation (domestic and international) and intellectual property rights influence technological innovation and R&D in an emerging economy. We further assess the moderating effect of internal funds in the relationships. Our empirical model based on firm-level data from 549 Ghanaian firms revealed that firms’ collaborations with domestic collaborations with other firms increase technological innovation and R&D, while collaboration with foreign firms increases just technological innovation. The results further proved that firms collaborations with Ghanaian universities increase technological innovation but not R&D. Contrary, firms’ collaborations with foreign universities increase both technological innovation and R&D. Trademarks and copyright protections demonstrated to increase technological innovation and R&D. Utility models were found to increase R&D but not technological innovation. The result of the mechanism effects shows that firms’ internally generated funds positively moderate the relationships between utility models and both technological innovations and R&D. A similar result was found for the positive moderating role of internal funding in the relationships between copyrights and technological innovations and R&D. Contrary, the result proved that internal funding has a negative moderating effect in the relationship between trademarks and technological innovations, as well as R&D. The research findings have several significant implications for theory and practice from the standpoint of enterprises operating in emerging markets. Theoretically, although developed economies have garnered sufficient scholarly attention on innovation collaboration and intellectual property protection, their impact on innovation remains underexplored in emerging markets. Therefore, researching how open innovation involving both domestic and foreign partners as well as intellectual property protection and how they interact with firms’ internal funding resonates with emerging market perspectives. Our findings have provided empirical evidence that open innovation and intellectual property protection influence both technological and R&D activities. These findings contribute to the burgeoning systemic perspective of innovation literature. Second, this study adds some theoretical insights to our comprehension of the effect mechanisms through which these relationships work to impact technological innovation and R&D. These mechanism-effect relationships have not been fully examined by existing studies. The main practical implications from the finding that the low extent of open innovation is that policymakers could extend public funding support to firms and higher educational institutions that intend to collaborate with both domestic and foreign partners. Finally, the allocation of internal funds to assist R&D operations covered by trademarks, utility models, and copyrights should be a top priority for firm management in Ghana.