Building innovation networks : the process of partner selection by young knowledge-intensive firms

Abstract

This paper addresses partner selection in innovation networks. It builds on the existing literature to develop an integrative framework that encompasses the main factors identified as influencing selection of innovation partners by young knowledge-intensive firms. It considers that both persistence and novelty are present in the network building process and that to fully understand the selection of innovation partners both aspects have to be considered. A framework is developed that integrates several arguments advanced in the literature to explain partner selection, namely social capital, imprinting and inertia for tie persistence, and network embeddedness and proximity for new tie selection. Using a rare event logit model, we estimate the likelihood of selecting a partner to access resources vital for innovation (both in aggregated terms and distinguishing between three resources - knowledge, complementary assets and credibility). The model is tested using data about the partnerships established by young Portuguese biotechnology firms, purposefully collected through questionnaire-based face-to-face interviews, complemented with documentary information. The results highlight the advantages of adopting an integrated framework that takes into account a variety of complementary explanations for both persistence and novelty, that tend to be addressed separately. They also uncover different network building strategies in terms of partner selection to access the different types of resources needed for innovation.