Interplay of network structure and neighbour performance in user innovation

Abstract

Previous studies showed that regular users have become an important source of innovation (called user innovation). Previous studies also suggested that two factors have significant impacts on user innovation: the social network structure of the users and neighbours' innovation performance (neighbours mean users having interactions with the focal user). However, in these studies, the influence of the two factors were only discussed separately, and it remained unclear whether these two factors interdependently affected a focal user's innovation. To examine the interplay between the network structure and the neighbours' innovation performance, we harnessed data sets from "Idea Storm", which collects data on user network and idea submission. Through panel regression analyses, we found that-within an open-network structure-the higher innovation performance of neighbours has a larger positive impact on the focal user's innovation ability. Conversely, in an enclosed network structure, neighbours' higher performance has a larger negative impact on the focal user's innovation ability. Our findings filled an important gap in understanding the interplay between the network structure and the neighbours' performance in user innovation. More broadly, these results suggested that the interplay between the neighbours and the network structures merits attention that even goes beyond user innovation.

Cooperation patterns of members in networks during co-creation

“…To investigate the participants’ different roles in co-creations, we used three datasets collected from websites: 1) SCP-Wiki, representing story-writing activities 29 , 2) GitHub, representing software development activities 30 , and 3) Idea Storm, representing idea generation activities 31 (see details in the “ Materials and methods ” section). In all the datasets, the final outcomes (i.e., SCP-stories in SCP-Wiki, source codes in GitHub, and ideas in Idea Storm) were generated through a cooperation chain of participants: an originator submitted the initial content and the revisors provided revisions and generated the next versions of the content; the final outcome was the final version of the content (see Fig.…”

Peripheral members create and core members integrate: cooperation pattern of members in networks during co-creations

“…Stars simply indicated how many registered participants in Github thought that the source code in the repertory was good. Finally, in Idea Storm, according to previous research 24,36 , we used the idea status to measure idea quality. The idea status was a five-class metric generated by a specialist team at Dell.…”

“…To investigate the participants' different roles in co-creations, we used three datasets collected from websites: 1) SCP-Wiki, representing story-writing activities 22 , 2) Github, representing software development activities 23 , and 3) Idea Storm, representing idea generation activities 24 (see details in the 'Methods' section).…”

“…Its data records the author, content, and time point for every SCP-story submission and revision. Github is one of the largest software development platforms in the world 24 . The Github data records the author and the time point of every source code upload and revision.…”

“…It includes 'Submitted', 'Archived', 'Acknowledged', 'Partly Implemented', and 'Implemented'. According to previous research 24,36 , ideas with a 'Partly Implemented' or 'Implemented' status were defined as valuable ideas. Therefore, in Idea Storm, the quality of ideas is a binary variable with a value of 0 (i.e., not valuable) and 1 (i.e., valuable).…”