This paper analyses the decision of food companies to realize innovations through in-house ac-tivities, outsourcing and suing collaborations. The paper uses information from a dataset of 389 Italian food companies collected by Unicredit group in 2007. We develop a set of hypotheses from three theoretical perspectives: transaction cost economics, strategic management and resource-based view. This paper aims at highlighting what firm’s features are related to the make, buy and mixed innovation-sourcing decisions. We found that these strategies are positively interlinked which is challenging current theories. We conclude the paper by discussing these results and bringing some interesting outcomes to discuss managerial implications and/or policy interventions in this highly strategic domain.