Interorganizational Collaboration and Innovation: Toward a Portfolio Approach^*

Abstract

In the literature on innovation, interorganizational collaboration has been advanced as beneficial for the innovative performance of firms. At the same time, large‐scale empirical evidence for such a relationship is scarce. This article examines whether evidence can be found for the idea that interorganizational collaboration supports the effectiveness of innovation strategies. This article empirically addresses this research question by analyzing data on Belgian manufacturing firms (n=221) collected in the Community Innovation Survey, a biannual survey organized by Eurostat and the European Commission aimed at obtaining insights into the innovation practices and performance of companies within the various European Union (EU) member states. Tobit analyses reveal a positive relationship between interorganizational collaboration and innovative performance. At the same time, the impact on innovative performance differs depending on the nature of the partner(s) involved. These findings strongly suggest the relevance of adopting a portfolio approach to interorganizational collaboration within the context of innovation strategies.

Entrepreneurial behaviour, firm size and financial performance: the case of rural tourism family firms

“…Ryan, Mottiar, and Quinn (2012) add that entrepreneurial behaviour strongly influences tourism development by stimulating others to follow innovative behaviour. Findings from general management (Faems, van Looy, & Debackere, 2005) confirm that increased inter-organisational collaboration improves the degree of innovation of single organisations. Therefore, it can be concluded that destination management organisations are important actors to stimulate entrepreneurial behaviour of rural tourism family firms by initialising cooperation in product/service development.…”

Does open innovation apply to China? Exploring the contingent role of external knowledge sources and internal absorptive capacity in Chinese large firms and SMEs

“…Faems, Van Looy and Debackere, 2005;Nieto and Santamaria, 2007;Porter and Ketels, 2003). Overall, a consensus has been developed that suggests that the exclusion of participation in such networks becomes a limiting factor for enhancing a firm's knowledge base (Shaw, 1998).…”

Disentangling antecedents and performance effects of family SME innovation: A knowledge-based perspective

“…This construct is closely related to the paradigm of open innovation (Chesbrough 2006) as Ba paradigm that assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as they look to advance their technology^(p. 1). Such collectivistic firm cultures as well as cooperative approaches toward external partners can contribute considerably to a successful exploitation of opportunities to sustain competition (Eddleston et al 2008;Hollen et al 2013;Faems et al 2005).…”