{"title":"Social brokerage and productivity of users in online innovation networks","authors":"Satyam Mukherjee, Tarun Jain","doi":"10.1111/jpim.12648","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>In this work, we investigate the impact of social brokerage on the innovation productivity of users in online innovation networks. Innovation in online networks is leveraged by coordinated interactions between the participating users. We leverage the data of users contributing on posts between 2017 and 2019 in two community question answering (CQA) forums: Stack Overflow and Math Stack Exchange. The innovation productivity of users in such online innovation networks, as valued by other participating users is quantified by the total score they received on their contributing posts. Users occupying brokerage positions are exposed to better ideas that boost the value of their contributing posts, thus improving their total score. Again, existing users with low social brokerage are also likely to gain from resource sharing owing to their denser networks. Our econometric analysis reveals that users in online innovation networks with very low or very high values of social brokerage receive higher scores as valued by other community users. Overall, we access the data of 537,938 users in Stack Overflow contributing on 6,002,996 questions, and 7,903,416 answers, and 20,393 users in the Math Stack Exchange contributing on 488,389 questions, and 638,110 answers. We observe a <i>U</i>-shaped effect of the user's social brokerage on the user's innovation productivity. Our empirical findings have various implications for firms hosting online CQA forums.</p>","PeriodicalId":16900,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Product Innovation Management","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":10.1000,"publicationDate":"2022-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Product Innovation Management","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jpim.12648","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"BUSINESS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
In this work, we investigate the impact of social brokerage on the innovation productivity of users in online innovation networks. Innovation in online networks is leveraged by coordinated interactions between the participating users. We leverage the data of users contributing on posts between 2017 and 2019 in two community question answering (CQA) forums: Stack Overflow and Math Stack Exchange. The innovation productivity of users in such online innovation networks, as valued by other participating users is quantified by the total score they received on their contributing posts. Users occupying brokerage positions are exposed to better ideas that boost the value of their contributing posts, thus improving their total score. Again, existing users with low social brokerage are also likely to gain from resource sharing owing to their denser networks. Our econometric analysis reveals that users in online innovation networks with very low or very high values of social brokerage receive higher scores as valued by other community users. Overall, we access the data of 537,938 users in Stack Overflow contributing on 6,002,996 questions, and 7,903,416 answers, and 20,393 users in the Math Stack Exchange contributing on 488,389 questions, and 638,110 answers. We observe a U-shaped effect of the user's social brokerage on the user's innovation productivity. Our empirical findings have various implications for firms hosting online CQA forums.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Product Innovation Management is a leading academic journal focused on research, theory, and practice in innovation and new product development. It covers a broad scope of issues crucial to successful innovation in both external and internal organizational environments. The journal aims to inform, provoke thought, and contribute to the knowledge and practice of new product development and innovation management. It welcomes original articles from organizations of all sizes and domains, including start-ups, small to medium-sized enterprises, and large corporations, as well as from consumer, business-to-business, and policy domains. The journal accepts various quantitative and qualitative methodologies, and authors from diverse disciplines and functional perspectives are encouraged to submit their work.