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Top1. Introduction
In the current environment of competition increasing, product life cycle shortening, product obsolescence accelerating, and globalization deepening, time-based competition has gradually become a competitive paradigm to gain advantages (Al Serhan et al., 2015; Hum & Sim, 1996; Stalk, 1988).As one critical strategy to realize the time-based competition (Stalk, 1988) rapid innovation is an important source of competitive advantage for a firm. Cooperation is an effective way to make product innovation rapidly. The so-called cooperation refers to a long-term relationship established by two or more autonomous enterprises to obtain more benefits than acting alone (Xue et al., 2018; Cao et al., 2010; Simatupang et al., 2005). Cooperative enterprises with a common goal strive to work together; share information, resources, and risks; and joint decision-making and execution to achieve mutually beneficial results (Cao et al., 2010; Bowersox et al., 2003).
Virtual integration is an external integration type implemented by cooperative enterprises based on information and communication technology (ICT) support. In essence, it is a form of external cooperation. With the development of ICT and the popularity of the Internet, virtual integration activities have become more and more common in practice. Especially due to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) sweeping the world and many economic activities driven to carry out virtually (Fedushko et al., 2021) in recent years, virtual integration has burst out of unprecedented vitality. Compared with traditional external integration, inter-firm virtual integration supported by ICT enhances the supply chain visibility (Asamoah et al., 2021; Wang et al., 2007). That enables all co-op enterprises to access relevant information and knowledge real-timely (Mandić et al., 2019) and make joint-decision timely (Aydiner et al., 2019), as well as enhances the collaboration (Zhang et al., 2018) and responsiveness of the supply chain (Asamoah et al., 2021).In practice, some enterprises that cooperate with their partners through ICT support successfully shorten the development cycle time of new products. Many previous studies have also confirmed that cooperation with external entities (e.g. suppliers, customers, scientific research institutes) can quicken product innovation. (e. g. Morgan et al., 2019; Taghizadeh et al., 2018; Mcnally et al., 2011; Carbonell et al., 2009; Droge et al.,2004). Cooperation with the outers, such as integration information with customers (Fang, 2008), customers engaging in the conceptualization and launching of new products (Chang et al., 2016), integration knowledge with customers (Taghizadeh et al., 2018), advanced integration with customers (Morgan et al., 2019), process integration with suppliers (Perols et al., 2013), would speed up the new products into the market. However, some studies have found that the effect of cooperation on the speed of product innovation is not always positive (e. g. Chang et al., 2016; Danese et al.,2010; Sun et al., 2010;Fang, 2008). Such as customers participating in executing development (Chang et al., 2016), product integration with suppliers (Perols et al., 2013) slow down the entry of new products into the market. Therefore, it is necessary to provide further evidence on how external cooperation affects the speed of product innovation. Virtual integration is an emerging cooperation mode that has many advantages. Focusing on that co-op mode this study answers how external co-operation plays on innovation speed below.