Repeated Partnerships and Radical Innovation: Evidence from Wireless Gaming Market
Repeated Partnerships and Radical Innovation: Evidence from Wireless Gaming Market

Summary/Abstract: Purpose — Firms often form alliances to manage innovation activities with prior or new partners. However, it is not clear whether repeated alliances might reduce or increase incremental versus radical innovations. This paper investigates the effect of repeated partnerships on firm´s innovations in a creative industry, namely mobile gaming industry. Specifically, the effects of publisher and carrier partnerships on new game releases with existing versus new genres. Design/methodology/approach — An empirical research was conducted using US mobile gaming industry data between 2003-2005 which covers the new games released in period after 3G introduction and before smartphones. Thus, included mobile games belong to the same generation in terms of mobile internet telecommunication technology. The effect of repeated partnerships between a publisher and a carrier on a mobile game genre was empirically tested with logistic regression. Findings—Repeated partnerships lead to lower likelihood of radical innovation. The likelihood of radical innovation was lower for a large size partner relative to small size partner. Discussion — This research contributes two streams of research: strategic alliance research and research on creative industries. The type of innovation repeated interactions lead to in creative industry context was examined and partner size was also introduced as an important factor. This study gives advices on firms who needs alliance and suggest to have more diverse portfolio to continue their radical innovations.

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