Bridging and Bonding: Exploring the Influence of Community-Level Networks on Product Innovation in Video Game Communities

With the rapid development of digital economy, firms are increasingly tapping into online communities to search for complementary innovation from users. From a network perspective, networks in online communities differ from networks in traditional organization in many aspects. A stream of literature has investigated how the networks at an individual level and team level influence innovative outcomes in online communities. We enrich this body of literature by exploring how networks at community level affect the community's innovation performance. Using the data collected from video game communities, in this article, we show that intra- and intercommunity networks can jointly impact innovation performance at community level. Our study not only contributes to the social networks research and innovation research in online communities but also offers important practical implications in terms of how online communities should manage the networks within and between communities to promote innovation.