Understanding innovation in coopetitive contexts: a meta-analysis

Research on coopetition suggests that cooperation and competition can jointly shape firm innovation outcomes. Central to this literature is the management of relational dynamics, reflected in the varying intensity of cooperation, competition, and their joint manifestation in coopetition. However, empirical findings remain inconclusive regarding the magnitude and contextual conditions under which relational dynamics, namely cooperation intensity, competition intensity, and coopetition intensity, relate to innovation outcomes. Informed by the coopetition paradox perspective and contingency logic, this study synthesises prior research by conducting a meta-analysis of 51 quantitative studies comprising 118,467 observations. The analysis estimates effect sizes for the relationships between relational dynamics and innovation outcomes and examines how these relationships vary across contextual and methodological characteristics. The results indicate that cooperation intensity and coopetition intensity are positively associated with innovation outcomes, whereas competition intensity does not show a consistent direct association across studies. Meta-regression analyses indicate that these relationships vary selectively across key contextual (e.g., industry type, geographic scope, and innovation radicalness) and methodological characteristics (e.g., measurement approach and unit of analysis). This study thus extends the coopetition–innovation literature by showing that coopetition is better understood not as a unified construct, but as distinct dimensions of relational dynamics whose associations with innovation outcomes vary across contexts.