Existing literature found that firms with more diversified technological knowledge performance better in technological innovation, because technological innovation is the result of technological knowledge recombination, and diversified knowledge can facilitate this recombination. However, this study argues that the positive relationship between knowledge diversity and technological knowledge recombination may not be inevitable;rather, the relation may depend how technological knowledge is distributed across R&D projects and R&D personnel. When firms distribute both high-frequency-used and low-frequency-used technological knowledge across R&D projects, the cognitive costs of technological knowledge recombination for R&D personnel decrease, and the novelty of innovation increase.Moreover, when firms have more R&D stars who engage in both academic research and technological research activities, their ability to digest, absorb, and integrate diversified technological knowledge is improved. Both conditions contribute to firm innovation.Specifically, the higher the degree centralization in intra-firm technological knowledge networks and the more R&D stars a firm has, the greater the contribution of diversified technological knowledge to knowledge recombination, which in turn benefits firm technological innovation. The analysis, based on 58 global biopharmaceutical firms that rank among the topinvention patents, supports the above hypothesis. This study introduces knowledge distribution as a boundary condition into the model of technological knowledge diversification, recombination, and technological innovation for the first time, thereby deepening the theory of technological innovation based on knowledge combination. Finally, practical managerial suggestions for technological innovation are proposed from the perspective of knowledge distribution management.