Facilitating Individual Innovation from the Perspective of Social Network Ties: A Fuzzy‐Set QCA Approach

ABSTRACT Pursuing successful innovation poses a significant challenge for employees, as generating creative ideas does not guarantee final innovation outcomes (i.e., products). To enrich our understanding of the critical factors that contribute to the success of transforming creative ideas into innovation outcomes, drawing on the social network perspective and configuration theory, we utilize the fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) approach to identify how different social network tie configurations facilitate various stages of individual innovation, including idea generation and idea implementation. Through a survey of 216 R&D employees in China, we have identified four pathways with distinct configurations that promote high levels of idea generation and three pathways that facilitate high levels of idea implementation. This work contributes to developing a configurational strategy for facilitating individual innovation from the perspective of social network ties, thus shedding light on how employees might successfully traverse different stages of the innovation journey.