The impact of cooperation events and ego-network effects on firm innovativeness-empirical evidence from the German laser industry

摘要: In this paper we seek to analyze the impact of both, single cooperation events and egonetwork effects on firm-level innovation output. On the one hand, we analyze to what extant single cooperation events have a direct effect on firm innovativeness. On the other hand, each cooperation event changes the structural configuration of a firms’ individual portfolio of cooperative relationships. Evolutionary network change processes at the micro-level–ie tieformation as well as tie-termination–shape the structural configuration of firm specific egonetworks which are assumed to have an indirect effect on innovation output. Consequently, the aim of this paper is to disentangle these two cooperation-related innovation effects. To shed some light on the raised questions we apply a unique longitudinal panel dataset for the full population of German laser source manufactures between 1990 and 2010. Firm innovativeness is …