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Innovations have the potential to create value by generating rents (primary appropriability), or they can be used as background knowledge for further innovations and value creation (generative appropriability). Because these possibilities exist, organisations need to make strategic decisions on knowledge sharing with their partners in collaborative innovation. In best cases, primary and generative appropriability are complementarities rather than alternatives: Knowledge sharing with partners for new innovation could be made safer using formal and informal isolating appropriability mechanisms that improve controllability, thereby preserving rent generation possibilities and simultaneously allowing safe knowledge exchange. We use a quantitative sample of 209 Finnish firms to examine how different formal and informal appropriability mechanisms relate to value capture and creation, and whether these relationships are affected by the strategic goal to reduce imitation of competitors or to improve safe knowledge sharing to partners.

Maintaining innovation potential means that ideas, and the people generating those ideas, should be at the firms disposal. Furthermore, the firm should be able to capture value from people's ideas. Losing these people therefore poses risks. Managing these risks is challenging, especially without intra-firm consensus on their role. This study examines how and why perceptions of severity and management of risks related to knowledge leaving and knowledge leaking differ across organisational levels and different firm locations. Depending on what types of differences are present, and why similarities and differences emerge, managers can direct their attention to different control or commitment-enhancing practices to address the risk of harmful knowledge loss and imitation. They should do this in a manner that enables them to maintain the prerequisites for future innovation and a creative work environment, while at the same time allowing global coordination and local adaptation.