Impact of Multiple Networks on Firm Innovation Based on Collaboration and Citation Relationship
From the perspective of multiple networks,this paper analyzes the complex effects of partnership and patent citation relationships on firm innovation as important ways of knowledge flow.Taking the ICT industry as an example,based on the industry-university-research institute collaboration patents and patent citations data,it conducts empirical analysis on 1 924 firms by negative binomial regression.The results show that the ego-network dynamics of collaboration networks promote firm innovation performance.The centrality of the patent citation network plays a mediating role between the stability of ego-network in the collaboration network and innovation performance.Firms can improve the centrality in the patent citation network by maintaining valuable stable cooperative relationships to promote knowledge flow,thus improving their innovation performance.However,the centrality of the patent citation network does not mediate the influence of expansion on firm innovation performance.The structure hole of the collaboration network has a negative moderating effect on the relationship between the centrality of patent citation network and innovation performance,i.e.,the higher the level of the cooperation network structural hole,the less the promoting effect of patent citation network centrality on innovation performance.However,the centrality of the collaboration network has no positive moderating effect on the relationship between them.This paper expands the research perspective of knowledge flow and collaborative innovation network and enriches the research on antecedent variables affecting firm innovation.It also has a guiding significance for firm innovation practice.
industry-university-research institute collaborationpatent citationknowledge flowmultiple networksinnovation performance