ABSTRACT
Innovation is important for firms to strengthen their position in a competitive market economy. Research in labs attached to large companies contributes significantly to that. What explains the innovative contribution of lab scientists? Much quantitative research in recent years has focused on the structure of contacts between individuals who are jointly involved in innovative activity. Qualitative research, emphasising trust or social capital, analysed how the nature of the relations might contribute to innovation. Influential sociologist of science Robert Merton (1968, 1988) in his work on academic scientists has confounded these two. In this chapter we offer a quantitative analysis of individual lab scientists’ contribution to a firm’s innovativeness, taking into account the structure of a network of contacts, the nature of these contacts in terms of generosity and gift exchange and, as well as how these two may indeed jointly contribute to a lab scientist’s innovativeness. As network analysis suggests, someone’s position in a social network is conducive to their innovativeness. Generosity, signifying the nature of someone’s contacts according to anthropological theory, does not directly affect individual innovativeness. Instead, however, generosity positively moderates someone’s network position, contributing to enhanced innovative performance.
