Dynamic positioning matters: uncovering its fundamental role in organization's innovation performance

Purpose This paper aims to propose the following questions: How does dynamic positioning influence organization's innovation performance? Does knowledge base mediate the relationship between them? Design/methodology/approach The empirical setting of this study is the smartphone collaboration network from 2004 to 2017; the authors selected one-site schemes and data of patents from the Derwent Innovation Database. Furthermore, the authors adopted the negative binomial model with random effects to test the hypotheses. Findings The regression results show that organization's dynamic positioning has an inverted-U-shaped relationship with its exploratory innovation. Similarly, organization's dynamic positioning has an inverted-U-shaped relationship with its exploitative innovation. Besides, knowledge base mediates the relationship between dynamic positioning and organization's innovation performance. Originality/value This study empirically confirms the relationship between dynamic positioning and organization's innovation performance by separately examining exploratory and exploitative innovation. Furthermore, this study provides a contribution to the literature linking dynamic positioning and organization's innovation performance by investigating the mediating role of knowledge base.