Collaboration and innovation: A longitudinal study of interfirm linkages and firm patenting performance in the global advanced materials industry.

In this dissertation I examine the relationship between interfirm collaboration and firm innovation performance. I ask two questions: (1) Do interfirm collaborative linkages affect the innovation performance of participating firms? and, (2) What factors affect a firm's ability to form linkages? In answering the first question I suggest that forming collaborative linkages provides two kinds of benefits for firms. First, linkages enable firms to share knowledge, combine complementary skills, and realize scale economies in research, and thus improve their innovation performance. Second, linkages are the means through which firms gain access to an industry wide network of such collaborative linkages. This network of interfirm linkages serves as an information conduit for knowledge spillovers. News of technical breakthroughs, successful and unsuccessful approaches, and new solutions to problems, travels through this network from one firm to another. Obtaining an advantageous position on this network provides firms with access to knowledge spillovers and thus has a positive impact on their innovation performance. If the formation of interfirm linkages is associated with such benefits, then it is natural to ask why all firms do not form many linkages, or obtain advantageous positions on the network. In the second part of the thesis, I address this concern. I suggest that the linkage formation behavior of a firm is determined not just by its incentives to form linkages, but also by the number of partners willing to link with it. I identify three factors that influence the number of partners available to a firm, its technical capital as captured through its stock of patents, its physical capital as captured through its ownership of supporting assets, and its social capital as captured through its prior embeddedness in the industry network. I argue that firms which are endowed with these advantages are able to form more linkages than firms which lack these advantages. I use longitudinal data from the advanced materials industry to test the key aspects of my arguments.Ph.D.ManagementSocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/129835/2/9635479.pd