Coopetition for radical innovation: technology, market and business-model perspectives

Abstract

Coopetition (collaboration between competing firms) is used in many contemporary industries to achieve various innovation-related benefits. However, there is still a lack of consensus in the existing literature as to whether it is beneficial in the case of radical innovations or whether it only supports incremental improvements due to the similarity of knowledge bases among competitors. We address this issue in an empirical study based on a cross-industrial survey in Finnish markets. The study focuses on three types of technological coopetition and on their effect on the technological, market and business-model radicalness of the firms' innovations. The results show that coopetition is negatively related to technological radicalness and positively related to business-model radicalness. The implications are that coopetition is likely to benefit incremental technological development over time and to promote the emergence of radical business-model innovations as competitors seek to differentiate their offerings.

International coopetition for innovation: Are the benefits worth the challenges?

“…Empirical studies addressing the impact of coopetition on radical and incremental innovation have reported contradictory results, which may be due to different dimensions of radicalness being measured (Ritala and Sainio 2014). Mention (2011, p. 51) found that coopetition has a negative influence on innovation novelty as firms are unwilling to share knowledge needed for such innovation and that coopetition "supports an imitation strategy rather than a willingness to introduce new to the market innovation".…”

“…Das and Teng 2000). The contradictory nature of coopetitive relationships can explain why research has been ambiguous about the effect of coopetition on innovative outcomes and, particularly, whether it is more beneficial for radical or incremental innovations Ritala and Sainio 2014). Fernandez et al (2014) argued that the challenges of coopetition require that firms manage tensions and adjust the relationship accordingly.…”

The Impact of Flipped Learning on Cooperative and Competitive Mindsets

“…Corporate sustainability demands to be free from the competitive view that the aim is to fight against rivals for market share within a given industry. Coopetition, a compound term of cooperation and competition, even appears in many contemporary industries [23,64,65]. The revolutionary mindset of cooperative competition starts with the recognition of sustainability-based strategies that most of one's own success can depend on the success of others [65,66].…”

The relation between coopetition and innovation/entrepreneurship

“…Scholars have shown that coopetition can contribute to different types of innovation: incremental and radical innovation (Bouncken and Fredrich 2012;Yami and Nemeh 2014), open innovation (Enkel et al 2009;Chesbrough and Bogers 2014), and technological innovation (Ritala and Sainio 2014). Bengtsson and Kock (2000) and Osarenkhoe (2010) have found that cooperation is more important during the early phases of the innovation process, whereas competition is more important in the latter stages, namely when the firm has launched the product.…”

“…The relation between coopetition and… Accordingly, some studies have begun to link coopetition to innovation (Ritala 2012;Bouncken and Fredrich 2012;Ritala and Sainio 2014;West and Bogers 2014;Yami and Nemeh 2014;Bouncken et al 2016). As innovation becomes further rooted in the organization's capacity to access external knowledge sources, coopetition increasingly shares a positive relationship with innovation, which offers a mechanism for organizational learning (Bengtsson and Kock 2000;Mas-Tur and Soriano 2014).…”