This study investigates how the alliance partners’ ego-network advantages, measured by the betweenness centrality, clustering coefficient and degree, affect focal firms’ ego-network advantages, innovation performance and the alliance stability. Under the exploitative innovation paradigm, alliance partners holding greater ego-network advantages would significantly improve focal firms’ ego-network advantages; Clustering coefficient and degree of alliance partners’ ego-network significantly improves focal firms’ innovation performance; However, they generate significant but mixing effect on the alliance stability. As innovation becomes more exploitation oriented, all of these effects weaken. Alliance partners’ ego-networks generate relatively weaker indirect effects on the focal firms as that of their own ego-networks. This suggests that the indirect network effects are not negligible. Our study suggests that alliance partners play a rather periphery role under exploratory innovation paradigm compared with that under the exploitative innovation paradigm. This is because the former requires more indigenous efforts to make breakthrough inventions. The results based on the counterfactual simulation process focus on the effect of key alliance partners’ ego-networks and reach generally similar conclusions, which confirms the robustness of this study. We discuss these findings and formulate policy implications at the end of this study.

中文翻译：

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晦涩但重要：考察联盟网络在探索性和剥削性创新范式中的间接影响

本研究调查了联盟伙伴的自我网络优势如何影响焦点企业的自我网络优势、创新绩效和联盟稳定性，以中介中心性、聚类系数和度为衡量标准。在开发性创新范式下，拥有更大自我网络优势的联盟伙伴将显着提高焦点企业的自我网络优势；联盟伙伴自我网络的集聚系数和程度显着提高了焦点企业的创新绩效；然而，它们对联盟稳定性产生显着但混合的影响。随着创新变得更加以剥削为导向，所有这些影响都会减弱。联盟伙伴的自我网络对焦点企业产生的间接影响与他们自己的自我网络相比要弱一些。这表明间接网络效应不可忽略。我们的研究表明，与剥削性创新范式相比，联盟伙伴在探索性创新范式下扮演着相当边缘的角色。这是因为前者需要更多的本土努力才能做出突破性的发明。基于反事实模拟过程的结果侧重于关键联盟伙伴的自我网络的影响，并得出大致相似的结论，这证实了本研究的稳健性。我们在本研究结束时讨论这些发现并制定政策含义。这是因为前者需要更多的本土努力才能做出突破性的发明。基于反事实模拟过程的结果侧重于关键联盟伙伴的自我网络的影响，并得出大致相似的结论，这证实了本研究的稳健性。我们在本研究结束时讨论这些发现并制定政策含义。这是因为前者需要更多的本土努力才能做出突破性的发明。基于反事实模拟过程的结果侧重于关键联盟伙伴的自我网络的影响，并得出大致相似的结论，这证实了本研究的稳健性。我们在本研究结束时讨论这些发现并制定政策含义。