IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0121973.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Revealing the Intricate Effect of Collaboration on Innovation

Author

Listed:
  • Hiroyasu Inoue
  • Yang-Yu Liu

Abstract

We studied the Japan and U.S. patent records of several decades to demonstrate the effect of collaboration on innovation. We found that statistically inventor teams slightly outperform solo inventors while company teams perform equally well as solo companies. By tracking the performance record of individual teams, we found that inventor teams’ performance generally degrades with more repeat collaborations. Though company teams’ performance displays strongly bursty behavior, long-term collaboration does not significantly help innovation. To systematically study the effect of repeat collaboration, we defined the repeat collaboration number of a team as the average number of collaborations over all the teammate pairs. We found that mild repeat collaboration improves the performance of Japanese inventor teams and U.S. company teams. Yet, excessive repeat collaboration does not significantly help innovation at both the inventor and company levels in both countries. To control for unobserved heterogeneity, we performed a detailed regression analysis and the results were consistent with our simple observations. The presented results revealed the intricate effect of collaboration on innovation, which may also be observed in other creative projects.

Suggested Citation

  • Hiroyasu Inoue & Yang-Yu Liu, 2015. "Revealing the Intricate Effect of Collaboration on Innovation," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(3), pages 1-16, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0121973
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0121973
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0121973
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0121973&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0121973?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Giuseppe Delmestri & Fabrizio Montanari & Alessandro Usai, 2005. "Reputation and Strength of Ties in Predicting Commercial Success and Artistic Merit of Independents in the Italian Feature Film Industry," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(5), pages 975-1002, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hiroyasu Inoue, 2018. "The community structure of business establishments and its properties: evidence from joint patent applications," Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, Springer, vol. 15(2), pages 465-475, December.
    2. Kibaek Lee & Jaeheung Yoo & Munkee Choi & Hangjung Zo & Andrew P Ciganek, 2016. "Does External Knowledge Sourcing Enhance Market Performance? Evidence from the Korean Manufacturing Industry," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(12), pages 1-19, December.
    3. Kibaek Lee & Jaeheung Yoo, 2019. "How does open innovation lead competitive advantage? A dynamic capability view perspective," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(11), pages 1-18, November.
    4. Whittington, Kjersten Bunker, 2018. "“A tie is a tie? Gender and network positioning in life science inventor collaboration”," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 511-526.
    5. K D S Fernald & H P G Pennings & J F van den Bosch & H R Commandeur & E Claassen, 2017. "The moderating role of absorptive capacity and the differential effects of acquisitions and alliances on Big Pharma firms' innovation performance," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(2), pages 1-22, February.
    6. Petr Hajek & Roberto Henriques, 2017. "Modelling innovation performance of European regions using multi-output neural networks," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(10), pages 1-21, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. A. E. Scorcu & R. Zanola, 2011. "Survival in the Cultural Market: The Case of Temporary Exhibitions," Working Paper series 36_11, Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis.
    2. Lutter, Mark, 2014. "Creative success and network embeddedness: Explaining critical recognition of film directors in Hollywood, 1900-2010," MPIfG Discussion Paper 14/11, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    3. Udo Staber, 2008. "Network Evolution in Cultural Industries," Industry and Innovation, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(5), pages 569-578.
    4. Natalia Gmerek, 2015. "The determinants of Polish movies’ box office performance in Poland," Journal of Marketing and Consumer Behaviour in Emerging Markets, University of Warsaw, Faculty of Management, vol. 1(1), pages 15-35.
    5. Homero Rodríguez-Insuasti & Néstor Montalván-Burbano & Otto Suárez-Rodríguez & Marcela Yonfá-Medranda & Katherine Parrales-Guerrero, 2022. "Creative Economy: A Worldwide Research in Business, Management and Accounting," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(23), pages 1-27, November.
    6. Wu, Yuanyuan & Wu, Shikui, 2016. "Managing ambidexterity in creative industries: A survey," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(7), pages 2388-2396.
    7. Meichen Dong & Jie Jiao & Jun Xia, 2022. "Consequences of homophily: does social status similarity enhance project performance?," Asian Business & Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 21(1), pages 58-81, February.
    8. Constantine Andriopoulos & Marianne W. Lewis, 2009. "Exploitation-Exploration Tensions and Organizational Ambidexterity: Managing Paradoxes of Innovation," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 20(4), pages 696-717, August.
    9. Hofmann, Julian & Clement, Michel & Völckner, Franziska & Hennig-Thurau, Thorsten, 2017. "Empirical generalizations on the impact of stars on the economic success of movies," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 442-461.
    10. Ponnamma Divakaran, Pradeep Kumar, 2018. "Technology-enabled community data for gaining pre-release brand insights," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 217-226.
    11. Silviya Svejenova, 2005. "‘The Path with the Heart’: Creating the Authentic Career," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(5), pages 947-974, July.
    12. Lorenzen, Mark & Täube, Florian Arun, 2008. "Breakout from Bollywood? The roles of social networks and regulation in the evolution of Indian film industry," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 286-299, September.
    13. Daphne Demetry, 2019. "How Organizations Claim Authenticity: The Coproduction of Illusions in Underground Restaurants," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(5), pages 937-960, September.
    14. Candace Jones & N. Anand & Josè Luis Alvarez, 2005. "Manufactured Authenticity and Creative Voice in Cultural Industries," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(5), pages 893-899, July.
    15. Andersen, Kristina Vaarst, 2013. "The problem of embeddedness revisited: Collaboration and market types," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 139-148.
    16. Pierre-Alexandre Balland & Mathijs De Vaan & Ron Boschma, 2013. "The dynamics of interfirm networks along the industry life cycle: The case of the global video game industry, 1987--2007," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 13(5), pages 741-765, September.
    17. Vicentini, Francesca & Boccardelli, Paolo, 2016. "Career diversity and project performance in the Italian television industry," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(7), pages 2380-2387.
    18. Ebbers, Joris J. & Wijnberg, Nachoem M., 2012. "Nascent ventures competing for start-up capital: Matching reputations and investors," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 372-384.
    19. Durand, Rodolphe & Hadida, Allègre L., 2016. "Logic combination and performance across occupational communities: The case of French film directors," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(7), pages 2371-2379.
    20. Giulia Cancellieri & Massimo Riccaboni, 2015. "From La Bohème to La Wally: How Organizational Status Affects the (Un)conventionality of Opera Repertoires," Working Papers 5/2015, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, revised May 2015.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0121973. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.