Network capital, exploitative and exploratory innovations——from the perspective of network dynamics

•Organizations’ network capital derives from their embeddedness in both collaboration networks and knowledge networks.•Network capital includes knowledge combinatorial capacity, knowledge stocks, technological distance, and network efficiency.•From the perspective of knowledge combination, exploration and exploitation could be supportive of each other.•SAOMs are used to test the relationships between network capital, exploratory and exploitative innovations. Taking the patent data in the field of nano energy from 2000 to 2018 as an example, this paper divides organizations’ network capital into four dimensions (i.e., knowledge combinatorial capacity, knowledge stocks, technological distance and network efficiency) and uses Stochastic Actor-Oriented Models to test the relationships between the four dimensions of network capital, exploratory innovation, and exploitative innovation. We found that exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation could be supportive of each other. Organizations’ knowledge combinatorial capacity has a positive effect on exploitative innovation, but a negative effect on exploratory innovation. Both knowledge stocks and technological distance have inverted U-shaped relationships with exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation. Network efficiency has a positive impact on exploratory innovation and an inverted U-shaped relationship with exploitative innovation.