The roles of shadow of the past and future in driving new product novelty and meaningfulness within coopetitive collaborations

Abstract

To cope with industry pressures and rising costs/risks of R&D, collaborations between manufacturers for new product development have become increasingly common. However, extant research presents contrasting opinions regarding product development within coopetitive relationships, characterized by simultaneous competition and collaboration. Drawing on the literature on coopetition and Resource Based View, we argue that to effectively develop new products within coopetitive relationships that are novel and meaningful, firms must understand the different roles that the shadow of the past and future play and how their influence changes under conditions of competitive intensity and market dynamism. We find, based on a survey of U.S. managers in 224 manufacturer collaborations, that a relationship's past and future have very different and often opposing effects in relation to novelty and meaningfulness. We also find that shadow of the past becomes an important resource under different environmental conditions than shadow of the future, highlighting the importance to treat each shadow as distinct. Further, we theoretically and empirically demonstrate that novelty and meaningfulness relate to different resource sharing mechanisms. For instance, we discover that competitive intensity affects the relationship between both shadows and novelty, while dynamism affects the relationship between both the shadows and meaningfulness.