The influence of technology development stages on the drivers of coopetition in the Dutch Green Hydrogen sector

Abstract

To accelerate the energy transition collaboration with competitors is necessary. The simultaneous activity of collaboration and competition is termed “coopetition”. Literature on coopetition shows that this type of collaboration can improve innovativeness of organizations by knowledge sharing and competitive tensions. By researching the drivers of coopetition on innovative technologies focused on green hydrogen across different technology development stages, understanding on the role of coopetition for innovations is increased. The technology development stages consist of the development of an innovation from an idea towards maturity. For this qualitative research 23 interviews were conducted covering 10 different coopetitive clusters. The sample was found by snowballing technique and data collection stopped when the data was saturated. The results show that the sustainability context of the study influences the collaboration as there is a desire to be a front runner and as reputational benefits are expected by coopeting companies. Furthermore, the results show that the technology development stage influences and can explain the drivers for coopetition, the coopetition structure, governance mechanisms, size of companies and intensities of coopetition. The technology stages explain the results by the different stage functions and characteristics. As the technology stage influences the drivers of coopetition and characteristics of coopetition it is important for both policy makers and management to take them into account. Policy makers can use this understanding to stimulate specific coopetition configurations to accelerate the development of innovations. This research provides insights to the importance of specific coopetition types for developing innovations. Hence, management can use this knowledge to indicate the need for, but also evaluate, coopetitive strategies.