Not Every Coopetitor Is the Same: The Impact of Technological, Market and Geographical Overlap with Coopetitors on Firms' Breakthrough Inventions

Whereas most coopetition research tends to conceptualize coopetitors as a homogeneous group, we explicitly consider the heterogeneity of coopetitors. In particular, we examine the impact of a focal firm's technological, market, and geographical overlap with coopetitors on its ability to generate breakthrough inventions. We expect that these different dimensions of overlap and their interactions shape knowledge acquisition opportunities and knowledge leakage risks in coopetition, which in-turn influences the ability of the focal firm to generate breakthrough inventions. To examine our theoretical arguments, we construct a unique data set from 323 firms in the global solar photovoltaic industry between 1995 and 2015. Our results indicate an inverted U-shaped relationship between a focal firm's technological overlap with its portfolio of coopetitors and its breakthrough inventions. In addition, we find that its market and geographical overlap with the portfolio of coopetitors moderate this curvilinear relationship. However, when both market overlap and geographical overlap are simultaneously considered, the moderation effect of geographical overlap becomes insignificant. Jointly, these findings enrich the coopetition literature, pointing to the relevance and importance of considering the interactions between technological, market and geographic heterogeneity of coopetitors.