How social capital influences innovation outputs: an empirical study of the smartphone field

Abstract

Though the significance of social capital is highlighted in earlier studies, the findings of the impact of social capital on an organisation’s innovation outputs are not definite. This study highlights the conflicting results regarding the role of social capital in innovation by separately examining exploratory and exploitative innovation and investigates the influence mechanism in depth by introducing ego-network stability as a mediator. Furthermore, we argue that technological distance may moderate the relationship between social capital and ego-network stability. The empirical setting is based on the patent data of smartphone industry for the period 2004 to 2017. The regression results show that structural holes have positive effects on the organisation’s exploratory and exploitative innovation, and structural holes affect exploitative innovation through ego-network stability. Similarly, degree centrality of the organisation has inverted-U-shaped relationships with its exploratory and exploitative innovation, and degree centrality affects exploratory innovation through ego-network stability. Furthermore, technological distance moderates the relationship between social capital and organisation’s ego-network stability in such a way that when the technological distance is at a low level, structural holes have stronger positive effect on ego-network stability. Additionally, when the technological distance is at a low level, degree centrality has a stronger positive effect on ego-network stability.