The Impact of Innovation Brokers on Interfirm Network Evolution

In recent years, the development of the idea of "Open Innovation" (Chesbrough, 2004; 2006) lead to the emergence of "Innovation brokers" who connect those seeking for solutions with a rather large number of potential knowledge suppliers. In this paper we analyze the implication that the existence of such Innovation brokers has on other organizational interchanges firms may engage in. Specifically, we ask how the inter-organizational network of a particular firm evolves over time if they use an Innovation broker or not. Apart from contributing to both, network theory by shedding light on the evolution of network ties, and the innovation literature by adding to our understanding of how knowledge flows develop over time, our work should also have rather practical implications for Innovation brokers themselves and for their clients