Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore how boundary-spanning demand-side search (BSDSS) fuels radical technological innovations as well as how innovation appropriability moderates this relationship. In particular, based on Teece’s (1986) argument regarding the appropriability of innovation, the authors divide factors to influence innovation appropriability into two types: external institution related and internal capability related.

This study employs a survey methodology. Specifically, the authors collected a sample composed of 150 high-tech manufacturing Chinese firms.

Results show that BSDSS has a positive effect on radical technological innovations. Further, the authors find that dysfunctional competition and political ties negatively moderate the main effect, whereas firms’ legal and IPRs protection capabilities positively moderate the main effect.

One major limitation is that the findings are based on data derived from Chinese firms, which may limit the generalization of the findings.

The findings suggest that firms competing Chinese market, both Chinese and foreign firms, should actively leverage BSDSS to boost radical technological innovations. Chinese firms should pay attention to the negative roles of appropriability hazards originating from external institutional environment. Foreign firms in Chinese market should be cautious on potential dysfunctional competition from local competitors, such as imitation and intelligence property violation, and enhance appropriability through building internal capabilities, such as legal and IPRs capabilities.

The study highlights the crucial roles of BSDSS in radical technological innovations, as well as the moderating roles of innovation appropriability. These results provide new insights into the drivers of radical technological innovations.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between environmental regulation, technological innovation and manufacturing quality competitiveness to provide some references for emission reduction activities and improvements in manufacturing quality competitiveness to achieve environmental protection targets and economic development as part of a win–win situation.

Based on the structure-behavior-performance paradigm and Grabowski’s research, a new empirical model was provided. The software, EViews 6.0, was used for econometric analysis. Regression analysis was adopted to explore the three indicators’ relationships.

First, environmental regulation can promote technological innovation effectively. Second, compared with wasted gas and wasted solids, investment in wasted water control promotes Chinese technological innovation most. Third, the impact of research and development investment, induced by environmental regulation, on manufacturing quality competitiveness is greater than that induced by non-environmental regulation. Fourth, the impact of lagged two-phase environmental regulation on manufacturing quality competitiveness is similar to that of lagged one-phase regulation.

The issue that Chinese manufacturing is facing is how to manage the trade-off between pollution control investment and improved quality competitiveness. This study enables managers to understand how to better implement environmental regulation initiatives while achieving environmental protection and quality competitiveness as part of a win–win situation.

This paper analyzes the relationships between environmental regulation, technological innovation and manufacturing quality competitiveness for the first time and provides the basic argument for integrating Chinese environmental regulation with quality competitiveness to reveal the uniqueness of the circumstances determining China’s economic development.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on how technological innovation capabilities (TICs) influence the product competitiveness of Chinese manufacturing enterprises and identify the key technological innovation components.

Quantitative research setting was applied in Chinese Yangtze River Delta. Survey was carried out with 166 responses.

The study reveals that the firm’s strategies capabilities, knowledge resources, fundamental research, application R & D, and manufacturing capabilities have significant influence on the new product development performance and product competitiveness of Chinese manufacturing enterprises. Interestingly, firm’s organizational capabilities and human, finance, and material resource have no significant correlation with the product competitiveness.

From a practical perspective, the relationships among TICs enablers, processes, and product competitiveness may provide a clue regarding how firms can promote technological innovation to sustain their competitive advantage. Moreover, the key factors of TICs found in the study are useful for policy makers and managers of Chinese firms to make decision.

This study is one of the first studies to apply the structure equation model method to measure the relationship between TICs and product competitiveness under the background of Chinese manufacturing. The results provide a new framework on the how technological innovation capability influence product competitiveness of Chinese manufacturing firms. From a managerial perspective, this study identifies several crucial TICs factors to support product competitiveness, and discusses the implications of these factors for developing organizational strategies that encourage technological innovation.

Human resource management (HRM) is seen as crucial for innovation and firm performance in China. This paper aims to carry out an empirical research to investigate the effects of main dimensions of HRM on technological innovation as well as organizational performance.

The research uses a sample of 194 high‐tech firms surveyed in eight provinces in China.

This research finds that employee training, immaterial motivation and process control have positive effects on technological innovation, while material motivation and outcome control have a negative influence on technological innovation. It is also found that technological innovation is positively related with performance.

This study does not consider the different influence of every HRM dimension affecting different innovation types. This should be a future research topic.

This study provides useful managerial implication for managers. First, employee training is needed to develop employees' knowledge. Second, material incentive is needed but not main motivation in Chinese high‐tech firms. Third, process control should be emphasized more than outcome control in Chinese high‐tech firms.

This study demonstrated that the HRM significantly contributed to technological innovation and firm performance. This study demonstrates that Chinese high‐tech firms' HRM has an important influence on technological innovation, and lead to firm's superior performance.

This paper aims to unravel the technological innovation pattern in China’s aerospace industry. The technological innovation pattern of China’s aerospace industry is identified and its theoretical foundation, structure, philosophy, formation and effects on the development of China’s aerospace industry are explored.

First, the theoretical foundation of synergy innovation of China’s aerospace industry is reviewed to further identify the technological innovation pattern. Second, Chinese ancient philosophy (dialectical thinking) is used to explain the structure and process of synergy innovation in China’s aerospace industry. Third, the formation process of synergy innovation is introduced, and, finally, the effects of synergy innovation are discussed.

The technological innovation pattern of China’s aerospace industry has undergone an evolutionary process. During this process, China’s aerospace firms have formed a unique technological innovation pattern, synergy innovation, under China’s special political and economic background. The synergy innovation has three characteristics, including original, integrated and application-based. The synergy innovation pattern application is one of the most important reasons behind the great achievements of China’s aerospace industry.

A unique technological innovation pattern, synergy innovation, is proposed for the first time. A new perspective for understanding innovation is provided by applying the Chinese dialectical thinking to decipher the philosophy of the technological innovation pattern. Based on this, this paper suggests that China’s aerospace industry should follow the situation and apply the synergy innovation pattern to achieve development and growth. This paper also illustrates a multi-method approach and emphasizes the different levels of organizing for innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to report a recent technological innovation investigation to the Chinese enterprises with different ownerships. The goal of this research is to discuss whether there are innovation mechanisms in place, and to test the influence of the innovation mechanisms and the government policies to the Chinese enterprises' innovation performance.

The investigation and analyses are based on a survey to the firms (n=42) from different sectors in central China, for which a research framework and analytical model of firm‐level innovation in China was developed.

The paper finds that the innovation mechanisms in the Chinese firms are to a certain extent in place, and the market factor has become the driving force for the enterprises' innovation. By using the pooled‐variance t‐test for comparing means, the authors further tested that innovation mechanisms and the government innovation policies have positive influences on the innovation performance of the Chinese enterprises.

The first‐hand technological innovation situation of the Chinese firms are evaluated by the relevant firm leaders (insiders) and analyzed by a Western research team (outsiders), which is of great significance to the Western academic and practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to review the evolution of policies and practices of open innovation (OI) in China under globalization.

This is a review paper. It combines historical archives and case study approaches, covering policies and practices at both the macro‐ and micro‐levels.

It is found that Chinese firms have in practice employed a variety of OI models since the reforms of science and technology systems in the mid‐1980s. Policies introduced by the Chinese Government with respect to inbound and outbound OI, as well as policies encouraging OI networks, have encouraged Chinese firms to adopt various OI modes and practices. Some critical institutional challenges still need urgent attention and effective efforts to reinforce them.

This paper aims to fill the gap in the literature by providing the first systematic review of the evolution of the policies and practices of OI in China, and exploring the implications for latecomer firms in building indigenous innovation capability. As far as the authors are aware, this is one of the first systematic review studies on OI policies and practices with a focus on emerging economies.

With the growing climate problem, it has become a consensus to develop low-carbon technologies to reduce emissions. Electric industry is a major carbon-emitting industry, accounting for 35% of global carbon emissions. Universities, as an important patent application sector in China, promote their patent application and transformation to enhance Chinese technological innovation capability. This study aims to analyze low-carbon electricity technology transformation in Chinese universities.

This paper uses IncoPat to collect patent data. The trend of low-carbon electricity technology patent applications in Chinese universities, the status, patent technology distribution, patent transformation status and patent transformation path of valid patent is analyzed.

Low-carbon electricity technology in Chinese universities has been promoted, and the number of patents has shown rapid growth. Invention patents proportion is increasing, and the transformation has become increasingly active. Low-carbon electricity technology in Chinese universities is mainly concentrated in individual cooperative patent classification (CPC) classification numbers, and innovative technologies will be an important development for electric reduction.

This paper innovatively uses valid patents to study the development of low-carbon electricity technology in Chinese universities, and defines low-carbon technology patents by CPC patent classification system. A new attempt focuses on the development status and direction in low-carbon electricity technology in Chinese universities, and highlights the contribution of valid patents to patent value.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the evaluation model of the enterprises' technological innovation system, based on the theory of complex adaptive system.

Combined with the status quo and recent studies of Chinese enterprises' technological innovation, the paper discusses the complex‐system features of the technological innovation. The stimulus‐response model is used to establish the two‐level framework for enterprises' technological innovation system. By means of the adaptive fitness function, the economic and social utility of enterprises' technological innovation is measured from two dimensions. Finally, the fuzzy catastrophe model is introduced to evaluate the enterprises' technological innovation.

The enterprises' technological innovation system has attributions of the subject aggregation, the systematic openness, nonlinearity and diversity. Thus, the macro‐micro based technological innovation system from the perspective of complex adaptive system is proposed. The system utility is considered based on the system subjects and system structure, and the calculation framework of the adaptive fitness for the whole system is obtained by considering the emergent property describing the system scale effect and structure effect. In fact, the fuzzy theory can well reflect the influential situation that the interactions between different factors may cause the mutation of the higher level and the interactions between enterprises can lead to the shifts of the system.

The paper proposes the complex adaptive system for the enterprises' technological innovation based on the special macro environment in China. A new framework for the research of technological innovation is provided by analyzing the system inner model. Fuzzy catastrophe model can reduce the evaluation irrationality due to the subjective index weights.

While previous studies find innovation to be an essential driver of export growth, the existing literature has neglected the role of different dimensions of technological innovation in export performance, especially in emerging countries. In particular, much less attention has been provided to investigate how enhancing innovation activities in more technical industries influence the relationship between technological innovation and export. Purpose of this paper is to present a unified framework to empirically investigate the integrated impact of the various technological innovation dimensions on export performance of industrial enterprises in China.

Using a panel dataset of enterprise-level data classified into China’s two-digit capital- and technology-intensive manufacturing industries for the 1998–2016 period and applying system-GMM regressions to control for the problem of endogeneity, the authors empirically investigate the integrated impact of a variety of the dimensions of technological innovation on export.

The authors find that: (1) Domestic R&D efforts and technology spillovers from foreign investment are critical determinants for capital- and technology-intensive exports. (2) External technology may not automatically contribute to export success whereas the interaction of external technology with domestic skill and expertise is a necessary condition for global competitiveness. (3) There exists complementarity between domestic and foreign innovation efforts when they jointly determine export. (4) Chinese government’s trade and innovation policies have significantly contributed to its export growth. Also, the authors examine that the extent of the effect of innovation on export depends upon the type of industry and it is found to be greater in capital- and technology-intensive industries.

This paper fills the research gap in existing literature by distinguishing between different dimensions of technological innovation and integrating them into a unified framework to empirically investigate their impact on export performance of industrial enterprises in emerging countries. The study provides important insights for policymakers.