A meta-analysis of the relationship between collaborative innovation and innovation performance: The role of formal and informal institutions

To cope with highly competitive business environments, an increasing number of firms are actively exploring collaborative innovation strategies. Yet, among the studies on this subject, there has been no consensus regarding the impact of collaborative innovation on innovation performance. To address this gap, we conducted a meta-analysis of 50 independent empirical samples, comprising 29,456 observations, to test the collaborative innovation–innovation performance relationship. We carried out both subgroup analyses and meta-regressions to explore how formal and informal institutions might moderate the collaborative-innovation–innovation-performance link. This work demonstrated that collaborative innovation strongly and positively correlates with firms’ innovation performance. Then, to further deepen our understanding of this subject, we examined two different collaboration types and found that supply chain (SC) collaborative innovation has a more significant impact on firms’ innovation performance than the effect produced through industry–university–research (IUR) collaborations. Furthermore, this study revealed that formal and informal institutions strengthen the positive relationship between collaborative innovation and innovation performance. This paper offers new insights for collaborative innovation research and provides important managerial implications for firms’ innovation strategies.