Exploring the Effects of Multi-Governance Mechanisms throughout the Dynamic Evolution of the Cooperative Innovation Network

The sustainable evolution of cooperative innovation networks is determined to a great extent by the effectiveness of their governance mechanisms. In this study, we draw from social network and stakeholder theories to emphasize two types of mechanisms that coordinate cooperative innovation: the internal drivers of transitivity and status, which are endogenous mechanisms of network embeddedness, and the external drivers of association autonomy, industrial policy support, and institutional environment establishment, which are the governing effects of external stakeholders. We constructed cooperative innovation networks using a dataset on joint applications for patents in China’s electronics information industry during 2006–2018 and applied a Stochastic Actor-Oriented Model (SAOM) for analytical purposes. The findings show that as networks evolve, the effect of transitivity on cooperative innovation first slightly decreases and then intensifies. The influence of status and industrial policy support intensifies first and then weakens. The impact of association autonomy remains stable, and institutional environment establishment on cooperative innovation intensifies. We also provide theoretical and managerial implications for the dynamic evolution of cooperative innovation networks.