What Goes Around Comes Around : - Expectation gap, structure, commitment and innovation in strategic innovation networks

Sammanfattning: Strategic innovation networks are formed to through collaboration and joint activities fuel the innovation performance and economic growth for the network members and the regions they are based in and their presence has been more and more common in recent times. Many studies have been made to explore the relations between the innovation performance and the network structure and some has suggested commitment as an intermediate variable. The effect of expectations on joining such network and especially the fulfillment of those expectations has however not been studied. This study explores, on the network level, the relationship between expectation gap, structure, commitment and innovation performance. A questionnaire was sent to all members of three Swedish strategic innovation networks in different industries and regions to collect data to check the relations. The result gives support to the results from previous studies with regard to relationship between network structure, commitment and innovation performance. Furthermore it indicates there is a negative relation between expectation gap and both network structure and commitment. The results of this can help network actors realizing the importance of managing expectations rather than experiencing the negative effects if they are not fulfilled.