The relationship between innovation network and innovation capability: a social network perspective

The key for acquiring innovation capability is knowledge transmission which is primarily based on the closer and tighter connections among businesses and other actors within innovation networks. Previous literature of patent analysis based on social network only explains the most influential corporations within an industry through social network indicators, but did not investigate the impact of these indicators on a firm’s innovation capability. This study uses social network perspective ‘centrality, cohesion and density’ to investigate the relationship between innovation network and innovation capability in the global semiconductor industry. Two purposes of this study are: (1) to investigate the innovation network relationship within the semiconductor industry at different periods and its evolution and (2) to study whether network position occupied by a firm in innovation network influences innovation capability. The empirical results show that firms with higher centrality and higher density have stronger innovation capability, but the weaker innovation capability with closer connection of sub-cluster (cohesion).