How linking with external-team star colleagues sparks team member's innovation journey

This study integrates research on stardom and the social model of employee creativity and innovation to clarify how the full range of team members’ social contacts (i.e., linked external-team stars, teammates, and direct leaders) play different roles in their innovation journey. Using the multi-time and multi-source data (including 239 members in 43 teams) collected from a Chinese high technology company, we find that a team member’s linked external-team stars’ brokerage is positively related to his/her idea generation, and such positive relationship is stronger when the focal member’s within-team idea discussion centrality is at a lower level. In addition, we also find evidences supporting a positive interaction effect of team member’s idea generation and leader-member exchange on his/her innovative outcome. Integrating the above results, we further examined a dual-stage moderated mediation model. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings, the limitations of this study, and the future research directions are discussed.