A Network Perspective of Organizational Innovation

Abstract

Current explanations undertheorize success across the broad stages of innovation, which include product invention, development, implementation, and success. While existing scholarship typically examines one, sometimes two, of these stages, innovation must be viewed more broadly with success resulting from the involvement of a wide range of actors including the firm, alliance partner, and overall network. In this article, I apply a network perspective to explain success across these stages. The argument I develop is that different types of networks are more relevant to certain stages of innovation. Network activity that increases from lower to higher levels of analysis is associated with success across the stages of innovation. Specifically, firm inventors influence product invention, successful product development and implementation are associated with dyadic‐level relationships between strategic alliance partners, and product success is impacted by a firm's central location in its entire network of strategic alliances. Results from regression models provide broad support for network approach advocated in this article.