Benefits of holding on to partners for innovation

Research has for a long time suggested a facilitating role of interorganizational relations for innovation performance. Although implicitly advocating for switching partners based on the evidence of having variety, diversity, and nonredundancy of information accessed in relations, practise suggests otherwise. Firms have found to be interlinked over time and some do not even search for alternative partners. This study adds to prior research by examining how and why some organizations stick to the same partners in innovation processes. We report a qualitative study of organizations that have an agenda of sticking to partners in the development of innovations. We find using existing relationships had several important benefits for innovative performance possible to categorize as 1) effective use of indirect linkages, 2) better prerequisites for unspecified exchanges, 3) providing a fast lane to essentialities by known values and firm characteristics, 4) improved dialogue and surprises, and 5) enhanced enthusiasm guided by altruism. Our contributions are related to prior work on management of interorganizational relationships for innovation.Godkänd; 2007; 20070623 (ysko