A strategy adopted by many firms to improve sustainability and performance is collaborative innovation.

This can be achieved through alliances with partners, or by coopetition (collaborating with competitors), within a multitude of configurations – networks, clusters, ecosystems, and platforms.

This growing phenomenon has led us to wonder what are the specificities of the interplay between innovation and these organisational systems?

All these issues are investigated in the CENA (Coopetition, Ecosystems, Networks and Alliances) track at the R&D Management Conference.

The track chairs Audrey Rouyre (Montpellier Business School), Nina Telg (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Charlotte Chappert (University of Montpellier) and Anne-Sophie Fernandez (University of Montpellier) discuss the theme ahead of the 2024 R&D Management Conference.

Can you describe some recent findings in this area that are of interest to you personally?

Coopetition, ecosystems, networks and alliances are creating increasingly complex inter-organizational relations between diverse actors.

These strategies and configurations can be explored across various organizational levels, spanning different types of companies, industries and combinations of the private and public sectors

Disparate organizational designs can generate managerial challenges and new approaches are needed to diffuse tensions.  A discussion of the informal and formal mechanisms that are available to ensure collaboration success is an interesting area of study.

If someone was new to this topic what would you suggest they read to get a quick overview of the issues?

To help future researchers to get into the topic of Coopetition, Ecosystems, Networks and Alliances, we suggest two articles for each themes:

For coopetition, recent literature reviews could help to have a holistic overview (Corbo et al., 2022). As tensions are prominent in coopetition and need to be managed, we suggest reading an article about sources of tensions in coopetition (Fernandez et al., 2014).

Corbo, L., Kraus, S., Vlačić, B., Dabić, M., Caputo, A., & Pellegrini, M. M. (2023). Coopetition and innovation: A review and research agenda. Technovation, 122, 102624.

Fernandez, A. S., Le Roy, F., & Gnyawali, D. R. (2014). Sources and management of tension in co-opetition case evidence from telecommunications satellites manufacturing in Europe. Industrial Marketing Management, 43(2), 222-235.

Regarding ecosystems, we are suggesting one of the fundamental research on dynamics in innovation ecosystems (Davis, 2016).

Davis, J.P. (2016). The Group Dynamics of Interorganizational Relationships: Collaborating with Multiple Partners in Innovation Ecosystems. Administrative Science Quarterly, 61(4), 621-661.

For networks, one important subject is the orchestration and management of several stakeholder in innovation contexts (Reypens et al., 2019).

Reypens, C., Lievens, A., & Blazevic, V. (2019). Hybrid Orchestration in Multi-stakeholder Innovation Networks: Practices of mobilizing multiple, diverse stakeholders across organizational boundaries, Organization Studies, 1-23. 

Finally, as A stands for Alliances, we suggest papers about alliances for innovation purposes (Un et al., 2010) and one about how to use resources in alliances portfolios (Chiambaretto & Wassmer, 2019).

Un, C.A., Cuervo‐Cazurra, A., & Asakawa, K. (2010). R&D collaborations and product innovation. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 27(5), 673-689. 

Chiambaretto, P., & Wassmer, U. (2019). Resource utilization as an internal driver of alliance portfolio evolution: The Qatar Airways case (1993–2010). Long Range Planning, 52(1), 51-71.