This paper examines the extent to which different sources of ideas for innovation are associated with novelty of innovation outcomes. We measure the novelty of product innovation using three well-established categories, ranging from highly novel new-to-world products to new-to-firm products that are essentially imitative, with products that are new-to-country (but not the world) being an intermediary category. In turn we investigate how knowledge derived from different external and internal (within-firm) sources of ideas can help firms increase innovation with different degrees of novelty. Our empirical analyses are conducted on a large sample of manufacturing firms from the South American emerging market of Colombia and show that many of the same sources of knowledge – such as scientific sources, production departments and managers – are associated with higher innovation in all three categories of novelty. However, some sources – notably external clients and internal interdisciplinary groups – are more significantly associated with more novel innovation than imitation. The implications of these findings for the literatures on innovation and imitation, and innovation by emerging market firms are discussed.