Repeated Partnerships and Radical Innovation: Evidence from Wireless GamingMarket

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 gamereleases with existing versus new genres.Design/methodology/approach—An empirical research was conducted using US mobile gaming industrydata between 2003-2005 which covers the new games released in period after 3G introduction and beforesmartphones. Thus, included mobile games belong to the same generation in terms of mobile internettelecommunication technology. The effect of repeated partnerships between a publisher and a carrier on amobile game genre was empirically tested with logistic regression.Findings—Repeated partnerships lead to lower likelihood of radical innovation. The likelihood of radicalinnovation 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 oncreative industries. The type of innovation repeated interactions lead to in creative industry context wasexamined and partner size was also introduced as an important factor. This study gives advices on firmswho needs alliance and suggest to have more diverse portfolio to continue their radical innovations.