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Introduction
When an enterprise cannot perform innovative research and developments alone due to internal limitations, what research strategy should they adopt to overcome this dilemma? Most previous literature focused on open innovation research when answering this question (Chesbrough, 2003a, 2003b, 2003c), as closed innovation could no longer satisfy the innovation needs of enterprises. George et al. (2005) suggested that most enterprises only search for ideas, creativity and innovative capacity internally; they lack a way to take advantage of external resources, limiting themselves to closed innovation models. In fact, most enterprises focus on internal development of new technologies and apply new technologies to their own products (Chelariu and Osmonbekov, 2014; Cheng and Chen, 2013; March, 1991; Díaz-Díaz et al. , 2006; Calantone and Stanko, 2007; Hakola, 2013; Hsiao and Chen, 2013; Wong and Tong, 2013). In comparison, the core concept in "open innovation" introduced by Chesbrough (2003a, 2003b, 2003c) involves enterprises breaking through their self-imposed borders and seeking innovative ideas from external sources to improve their own innovative capacities.
Thus, to pursue opportunities of external innovation, enterprises must have links to the external environment. The importance of mutual dependence between enterprises and the external environment is obvious when viewed from the resource dependence perspective (Pfeffer, 1982; Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978). The organizational environment is an open system; when an organization is unable to obtain needed resources internally, it must conduct exchanges with organizations and/or individuals in the external environment who have the relevant resources (Lambe and Spekman, 1997; Lin and Huang, 2013; Yen and Hung, 2013), cooperate with other organizations (Bicen and Hunt, 2012; Chen et al. , 2013; Deitz et al. , 2010; Kim et al. , 2013; Ritala et al. , 2012) or introduce external complementary resources (Huang et al. , 2009; Talay et al. , 2009). Because an organization cannot be entirely self-sufficient and needs resources provided by the environment, it will develop mutual dependencies with the environment and the factors or resources it provides. By doing so, the organization obtains the resources, technologies, knowledge or capabilities it lacks. External resources can compensate for resources lacking in the organization, providing a means for the organization to establish competitive advantage. The ability of an organization to step outside of its organizational boundaries to...