Social capital’s role for value creation in open innovation networks.

This study aims to understand how various types of social capital and relational exchanges effect flows of knowledge resources within open innovation networks, particularly within the context of University and Business collaborations. Generally, university-business relationships are depicted as a link to knowledge resources that are governed by market-based mechanisms. This economic assumption overlooks social contingencies that contribute to value creation between affiliated parties. This study addresses this deficiency by employing a social network analysis technique to define correlations between formal and informal social capital structures that contribute to mutual benefit and value creating knowledge generation. This study finds informal connections are vital for new product development, knowledge diversity and network size but is often overlooked, thereby offering an extension to the open innovation literature