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Because firms today operate in increasingly turbulent and complex environments, they need to be more proactive and innovative. Networks are gaining in importance, especially for small and medium enterprises with limited resources as R&D cooperations or cooperations along the value chain seem to be the only way to succeed with technologically challenging and promising but also expensive and risky product innovations. One of the key problems of these networks, however, is the question of how to plan, organize and control the innovation processes that are distributed over several partners. Theoretically derived and empirically proven success factors could help as much here as in the traditional success/failure discussion of new product development within firms. This paper discusses the effects of such factors, which partly derive from the traditional success/failure discussion within firms (e.g. market potential, product advantage, technological synergy, proficiency of technological or marketing activities) but also factors derived from recent network research (e.g. trust or dependence on partners). Their effect on new product performance is discussed on the basis of a comprehensive survey with 271 participating networks. The results confirm the traditional success factors, especially the product advantage and proficiency factors. But they also show that network-related success factors (especially network cohesion and organization) are of similar major importance.R&D Management 41, 2,

Purpose Coworking spaces (CWS) are a globally increasing phenomenon of new shared work environments used by freelancers, entrepreneurs and small companies that often work in information technology and creative industries. The purpose of this study is to examine coworkers’ knowledge sharing (KS), focusing on attitude, behavior and individual creativity. Several theoretical perspectives are deployed for factors influencing KS. Design/methodology/approach A research model is developed and tested, relying on a sample of 95 German coworkers using a structural equation modeling approach. Findings The attitude towards knowledge sharing and actual sharing behavior in CWS improve coworkers’ creativity. Behavior and attitude differ in positive impact depending on the level of collaboration orientation. Despite the presence of an agreeable atmosphere, lower collaborative orientation results in KS being rated lower. Practical implications Community commitment showed the highest positive impact on KS behavior. For community development, CWS will have to take differences in the KS behavior of their coworker client base into account to foster creativity. Originality/value The authors provide initial empirical insights into the relationship between KS and creativity in CWS. Core coworking values are shown not to form a uniform block but rather “collaboration” is acting as a discriminator.

Key persons can play an important role in the development and diffusion of new products, processes or technologies. Their functions, contributions and interactions within companies have been subject to numerous investigations. From a theoretical point of view, promotor theory focuses on several specialists to overcome different barriers to innovation, while champion theory concentrates on generalists playing multiple roles. Empirical results point to generalists being better suited for highly innovative projects, but on the other hand different roles should preferably be played by different key persons. A central gap in the literature is that this issue has not been investigated sufficiently so far in an inter-organizational context. The questions are: Is role accumulation beneficial for innovation project performance with respect to the key persons? Is role accumulation even more advantageous with increasing degrees of innovativeness? A sample of 107 innovation projects where small and medium-sized enterprises take part is used as a unit of analysis. The network manager served as the respondent. A measurement approach based on an extended Rasch scale was introduced for this purpose. The results show that indeed 'too many cooks spoil the broth': Instead of many single-role players in each organization, we need a few multiple role players in an interorganizational context.