The Effect Of Brokerage Role On Creativity Of Key Inventor In The Innovation Collaboration Networks

Any competitive business attaches importance to innovation activity and the most needed of innovation is talent. In collaborative innovation networks, compared to other people, R & D personnel who occupies structural holes as a broker will have a higher innovation efficiency due to the structural advantages of location. In fact, play a leading role in innovation activities tend to be extremely small part of the creative R & D personnel, that is the key inventor who not only have their own outstanding creativity, but also crucial for improving the overall innovation capability of enterprises. Naturally, key inventor who occupies structural holes as a broker should be the focus of business management practice and theory.Through the theory review of key inventor and brokerage role, focusing on creativity of key inventor, using structural holes and heterogeneity of knowledge to divide brokerage roles, based on 31 US pharmaceutical companies'patent data, this paper aims to study the impact of brokerage role on creativity of key inventor during their career stages(rise and terminal decline) and the impact of role multiplicity, past creativity, knowledge scope, interaction of role multiplicity and past creativity, interaction of role multiplicity and knowledge scope on current creativity of key inventor. The key contributions are as follows:1. When we study the impact of brokerage role on creativity of key inventor during their career stages (rise and terminal decline), based on patent quantity of key inventor, we divide key inventor's career into two stages:rise and terminal decline, and count quantity of brokerage role in the corresponding stage. The result of distribution of key inventor during their careers stages(rise and terminal decline) shows that during the whole careers of key inventor, Representative play the most important role on creativity of key inventor, Gatekeeper and Liaison in the second place, Coordinator and Itinerant play only a small role on creativity of key inventor; Comparing with career rise stage, Representative, Gatekeeper and Liaison's influence on key inventor's creativity falls, but Coordinator and Itinerant's rises.2. This paper use negative binomial regression model to analyze the impact of role multiplicity, past creativity knowledge scope, interaction of role multiplicity and past creativity, interaction of role multiplicity and knowledge scope on current creativity of key inventor. The results of the analysis show that in a three-year and four-year data window sample, results of logistic regression model analysis significantly supports hypothesis 1-4, that is to say, role multiplicity, past creativity, knowledge scope will improve creativity of key inventor, interaction of role multiplicity and past creativity will reduce creativity of key inventor. however, hypothesis 5 is not significantly supported, that is to say, interaction of role multiplicity and knowledge scope will not significantly improve creativity of key inventor. In a five-year data window sample, the relation between role multiplicity and current creativity of key inventor becomes not significant. The results suggest that from the patent perspective exclusively, the effect of role multiplicity on current creativity of key inventor is sensitive to the variation of data window's length. In other words, time matters if we want to test the results of role multiplicity. In addition, relation between interaction of role multiplicity and knowledge scope and creativity of key inventor is still not significantly positive.These conclusions not only deepen the theoretical understanding of key inventor and push the development of the related research of the brokerage roles and knowledge, but also provide implications for pharmaceutical enterprises to manage creative talents and optimize research and development network design.