Irán
Innovation nets, like organizations, need to be managed perfect. With rising numbers and actor heterogeneity in an innovation net, the potential for organizations to create, distribute and acquire knowledge more efficiently increment, but the complexity of managing the net also increment. Having someone in location to gain insight into the participating organizations’ structures, and to keep track of and coordinate the available and usable resources, represents a clear advantage. While scientific research and management practice have acknowledged the significance of net managers for net efficiency, little research effort is proprietary to empirically study and validate this theoretical proposition. This article fills part of this gap by examining the penetration of the simple existence of net managers on core management functions and efficiency outcomes in low and high complexity settings. Our results confirm that employing a net manager significantly improves core net management functions and relational as well as structural net efficiency, which in turn increment goal achievement efficiency and net keeping. Furthermore, our results from interaction analyses show that the net managers’ contribution is even greater in high complexity settings.