New research published in Frontiers of Engineering Management reveals how collaboration patterns within innovation communities significantly influence corporate innovation performance, particularly in the global 3D printing industry. The study, which analyzed 22 years of patent and network data from 6,109 organizations, provides crucial insights for businesses seeking to optimize their innovation strategies through strategic partnership management.
Researchers from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Tsinghua University, and the Higher School of Economics in Russia found that both within-community embeddedness (ties to peers inside the same innovation community) and cross-community embeddedness (connections that bridge multiple communities) promote higher innovation output. The study, available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s42524-025-4188-x, used topological clustering methods to identify innovation communities based on co-patenting activities and measured innovation performance through annual firm-level patent counts.
The research demonstrates that within-community connections provide trusted access to shared knowledge, allowing faster resource integration and reducing coordination costs. Cross-community ties offer diverse expertise and non-redundant information, broadening innovation perspectives. However, the study reveals that collaboration complementarity plays a critical contingency role—when complementarity is high, firms gain more from within-community relational embeddedness while the innovation benefits of cross-community collaboration weaken due to integration complexity and resource absorption costs.
"Our results highlight that innovation is not only about forming partnerships, but about forming the right partnerships in the right network positions," the authors stated. "Dense internal ties accelerate trust and knowledge transfer, while cross-community ties introduce novel perspectives. Yet, high complementarity does not always guarantee more innovation—it amplifies internal collaboration benefits but increases coordination costs across communities."
This research addresses a significant theoretical gap in innovation literature, where previous studies reported inconsistent results regarding the relationship between network embeddedness and innovation performance. By distinguishing between within-community and cross-community collaborative structures and examining how collaboration complementarity alters these relationships, the study clarifies why some firms benefit more from certain types of connections than others.
The findings offer strategic guidance for firms pursuing innovation advantage. Companies deeply embedded in innovation communities may strengthen internal ties to leverage complementarities while selectively bridging external communities to maintain diversity of ideas. The analytical framework is applicable to emerging domains such as artificial intelligence, new materials, and biomanufacturing, suggesting broader implications for technology-driven industries.
Policymakers can use these insights to guide industrial cluster development, promote cross-sector collaboration, and design incentive mechanisms for innovation-driven industries. The study emphasizes that optimizing embeddedness and collaboration patterns can accelerate technological progress and enhance competitiveness in global innovation ecosystems, making it particularly relevant as digitalization and globalization continue to reshape knowledge exchange across firms.
