Creativity of key inventors in the technical pre-development stage: the time effect of network content and structure

Technical pre-development has become increasingly crucial for enterprises in making core technological breakthroughs. Using a cross-level analysis framework of ego and whole networks, this study comprehensively considers the network content and structure. Specifically, it introduces the dynamic characteristics of organisational network research over time to study the impact of current knowledge breadth, structural holes, degree centrality, assortativity, and transitivity on the creativity of key inventors in the pre-development stage. The study uses the 4G and 5G patent data of 10 representative telecommunication enterprises as the sample data. The results demonstrate that there is an inverted U-shaped association between the current knowledge breadth and the creativity of key inventors. At the ego-network level, although there is also an inverted U-shaped relationship between the current degree centrality and the creativity of key inventors in theory, within the value range of the sample data, this relationship indicates a monotonically increasing trend. At the whole-network level, assortativity and transitivity have U-shaped and inverted U-shaped significant effects on the creativity of key inventors, respectively. Our study offers a new perspective for the management of the creativity of key inventors in the pre-development stage.