Coopetition strategy and innovation performance: a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis

Coopetition harbours the potential to drive innovation. However, our understanding of how innovation is impacted by various coopetition strategies, and how this interacts with firms' external governance mechanisms and internal organisational capabilities, remains limited. This study employs the fsQCA method to investigate how the interplay among coopetition strategies, governance mechanisms and knowledge integration capability (KIC) – the three antecedent conditions – propels innovation. Through an examination of 413 high-tech firms, we identified four distinct configurations and unveiled two primary findings. First, when firms embrace an unbalanced coopetition strategy, it should be matched with relational governance; Conversely, for a balanced-strong coopetition strategy, transactional governance is deemed more suitable. Second, within any configuration characterised by high-innovation performance, KIC emerges as a core condition. This research contributes a new lens to the deeper understanding of complexity theory in firm innovation.