Corporate innovation performance is strongly influenced by how firms are embedded within collaboration networks, according to new research analyzing 22 years of patent data from the global 3D printing industry. The study, published in Frontiers of Engineering Management in 2025, reveals that both within-community and cross-community embeddedness promote higher innovation output, but collaboration complementarity plays a crucial moderating role that explains previously inconsistent findings in innovation research.
Researchers from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Tsinghua University, and the Higher School of Economics in Russia analyzed global patent data from 6,109 organizations over 22 years, constructing collaboration networks based on co-patenting activities. Using topological clustering methods to identify innovation communities, the team examined how network structure and partner diversity jointly shape firms' innovation performance. The complete study is available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s42524-025-4188-x.
The research distinguishes between two types of embeddedness: within-community embeddedness representing ties to peers inside the same innovation community, and cross-community embeddedness reflecting connections that bridge multiple communities. Both types significantly enhance innovation output according to negative binomial regression models. Within-community connections provide trusted access to shared knowledge, allowing faster resource integration and reducing coordination costs, while cross-community ties offer diverse expertise and non-redundant information that broaden innovation perspectives.
Collaboration complementarity emerges as a critical contingency factor that alters these relationships. When complementarity is high, firms gain more from within-community relational embeddedness, but the innovation benefits of cross-community collaboration weaken due to integration complexity and resource absorption costs. This finding helps reconcile contradictory results in previous literature that reported mixed effects of embeddedness on innovation performance.
The authors note that innovation is not only about forming partnerships but about forming the right partnerships in the right network positions. Dense internal ties accelerate trust and knowledge transfer, while cross-community ties introduce novel perspectives. However, high complementarity does not always guarantee more innovation—it amplifies internal collaboration benefits but increases coordination costs across communities, suggesting firms should manage their collaboration portfolios strategically rather than expanding cooperation blindly.
This research offers strategic guidance for firms pursuing innovation advantage. Companies embedded deeply in innovation communities may strengthen internal ties to leverage complementarities while selectively bridging external communities to maintain diversity of ideas. Policymakers can use these insights to guide industrial cluster development, promote cross-sector collaboration, and design incentive mechanisms for innovation-driven industries. The analytical framework is also applicable to emerging domains such as artificial intelligence, new materials, and biomanufacturing.
Digitalization and globalization have accelerated knowledge exchange across firms, fostering open innovation ecosystems where organizations collaborate beyond geographical boundaries. Within these ecosystems, innovation communities enable knowledge sharing, resource access, and mutual learning. The study's findings clarify why previous research reported inconsistent results and provide new evidence for how network structure drives innovation outcomes in increasingly interconnected technological landscapes.
