“All for One and One for All?” - Knowledge broker roles in managing tensions of internal coopetition: The Ubisoft case

Abstract

Coopetition, i.e., cooperation between competing actors, has become a pervasive strategy for innovative firms. The primary focus of studies investigating coopetition centers on inter-firm relationships, highlighting the benefits, limits and configurational patterns of cooperative relationships between competing firms. Only a small, emerging group of studies seeks to extend the concept to the intra-firm level, stressing the existence and effects of competition and cooperation between units that are part of the same organization. This paper contributes to this latter group by investigating the effects of internal coopetition on knowledge and innovation sharing and highlighting the fundamental role of knowledge brokers in managing the resulting tensions. Based on a qualitative case study of the video game publisher Ubisoft, we stress how the tensions raised by internal coopetitive settings limit knowledge sharing between units, and we analyze the mechanisms through which the knowledge broker helps to overcome these limits. We identify three main functions of this knowledge broker that allow the promotion of knowledge and innovation transfer to occur between coopeting units: (1) protecting the unit's competitive advantage by introducing a lagging principle in the transfer process, (2) reducing sharing costs by standardizing innovative solutions, and (3) enhancing awareness of and trust in innovative solutions by centralizing knowledge diffusion.

The architecture of coopetition: Strategic intent, ambidextrous managers, and knowledge sharing

“…However, pursuing the contradictory exploration and exploitation activities simultaneously could make the trade-off of ambidexterity challenging for firms (Gibson and Birkinshaw, 2004), due to the potential tensions such as trade-offs between pursuing one activity over the other (Gibson andBirkinshaw, 2004, Simsek et al, 2009). With the knowledge routines in place, firm's managers, as knowledge brokers, can differentiate the simultaneous activities (Chiambaretto et al, 2019), and deal with the trade-offs in relationships as per the firm's intent. Accordingly, scholars argue that when strategic intent is complemented by knowledge flows, managers can think and act ambidextrously for their firm to attain exploration and exploitation objectives simultaneously Wong, 2004, Gibson andBirkinshaw, 2004), with better coordination and strategic control (Veliyath, 1992, Bodwell and Chermack, 2010, O'Reilly lll and Tushman, 2011.…”

“…Second, while previous studies discuss potential relationships between ambidextrous managers and various paradoxical activities inherent to coopetition (Luo, 2007b, Bengtsson et al, 2016a, Estrada and Dong, 2019, Chiambaretto et al, 2019, Bouncken et al, 2020, they lack clarity in explaining what skillsets could make managers ambidextrous. Additionally, extant research has also overlooked the potential direct relationship between ambidextrous managers and coopetition.…”

“…When it comes to knowledge sharing in coopetition settings, we acknowledge that it tends to cause sharing vs protection tensions between partner firms which eventually requires a combination of legal, formal, and informal protection mechanisms to address them (Ritala and Hurmelinna-Laukkanen, 2013, Estrada et al, 2016, Fernandez and Chiambaretto, 2016, Chiambaretto et al, 2019, Gast et al, 2019. However, given our ambition to investigate how a firm's strategic intent is complemented by knowledge sharing between the coopetitive partners, we choose not to get into details of knowledge protection in this research.…”

Towards a research agenda on how, when and why trust and distrust matter to coopetition

“…been shown that third parties can act as knowledge brokers facilitating management of tensions in internal coopetition (Chiambaretto, Massé, & Mirc, 2019) or as trust builders supporting the implementation of network coopetition (Porto Gomez, Otegi Olaso, & Zabala-Iturriagagoitia, 2016). Moreover, trust complements contractual complexity and dependency (Ratzmann et al, 2016) facilitating the implementation of plural governance, which has found to favour coopetition and improve innovation performance (Bouncken et al, 2016).…”

Coopetition in healthcare: Heresy or reality? An exploration of felt outcomes at an intra-organizational level

“…If coopetition is most often studied at an inter-organizational level, i.e. between coopetitors, it also has consequences at the intraorganizational level, between business units competing for internal resources or external markets (Chiambaretto et al, 2019). Scholars have therefore investigated several dimensions and levels of coopetition, but very little has been discussed about the feelings of individuals inside organizations that engage in coopetition.…”