Collaborative Innovation Performance Within Platform-Based Innovation Ecosystems: Identifying Relational Strategies With fsQCA

Collaborative innovation within Platform-based Innovation Ecosystems (PIEs) relies upon the creation of effective partnerships between platform owners and complementors. Despite this, limited research examines the mechanisms that drive collaborative innovation performance within them. To address this important gap, this study performs a fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) on 203 Chinese technological firms with the aim of uncovering the distinct configurations of relational elements that drive collaborative innovation within PIEs. The findings reveal three strategies that are equally effective at delivering collaborative innovation: (a) super-modular complementarity in relational operation dependence, (b) unique complementarity in relational operation dependence, and (c) coherence in relational norms dependence. Theoretically, the study contributes to literature on inter-organizational relationships in PIEs and collaborative innovation, by delineating essential relational structures and linking these relational elements to collaborative innovation performance. From a practical standpoint, both platform owners and complementors can use these findings to strengthen their collaborative innovation performance within PIEs.