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The purpose of this paper is to study the differences in the internationalization process of firms from emerging economies and the impact of their international expansion related choices on the nature of technological innovations developed by these firms. Specifically, the authors compare two principal perspectives on internationalization – the incremental internationalization process (slow, gradually increasing commitments using greenfield investments to similar host countries) and the springboard perspective (aggressive, rapidly increasing commitments using mergers and acquisitions to advanced host countries).

Building on key differences between the incremental internationalization and springboard perspectives, the authors argue that differences in the speed and mode of entry, as well as the interaction between the mode of entry and location of internationalization, will lead to differences in the types of technologies (mature versus novel) developed by emerging economy firms. The authors examine the hypotheses using panel data from 1997 to 2013 on emerging economy multinationals (EMNEs) from the Indian bio-pharmaceutical industry.

The findings suggest that firms internationalizing at higher speeds and using cross-border M&As tend to have innovations in mature technologies. The interesting findings can be explained by the challenges faced by emerging economy firms in experiential learning and the assimilation of external knowledge. In addition, the authors find that internationalization to technologically advanced countries weakens the relationship between cross-border M&As and innovation in mature technologies, suggesting that direct learning from technologically advanced environments may help alleviate the assimilation challenges of cross-border M&As.

The authors advance literature on EMNE internationalization by comparing the impact of their choice of internationalization approaches (incremental internationalization or springboard approach) on their innovation performance. The authors contribute to literature on EMNEs that has focused on the determinants of internationalization by identifying the learning implications of internationalization. The authors contribute to the nascent stream of literature on the level of innovation and catching up by EMNEs by performing a fine-grained analysis of the nature of technology innovation.

This study aims to assess the technological capability of Chinese internet platforms (BAT: Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) compared to US ones (GAFA: Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple). More specifically, this study explores Baidu’s technological catching-up process with Google by analyzing their patent textual information.

The authors retrieved 26,383 Google patents and 6,695 Baidu patents from PATSTAT 2019 Spring version. The collected patent documents were vectorized using the Word2Vec model first, and then K-means clustering was applied to visualize the technological space of two firms. Finally, novel indicators were proposed to capture the technological catching-up process between Baidu and Google.

The results show that Baidu follows a trend of US rather than Chinese technology which suggests Baidu is aggressively seeking to catch up with US players in the process of its technological development. At the same time, the impact index of Baidu patents increases over time, reflecting its upgrading of technological competitiveness.

This study proposed a new method to analyze technology mapping and evolution based on patent text information. As both US and China are crucial players in the internet industry, it is vital for policymakers in third countries to understand the technological capacity and competitiveness of both countries to develop strategic partnerships effectively.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of an industry’s connectedness to foreign countries on knowledge sourcing.

The authors examine the research model through probit regression techniques to the 472,303-patent data across 16 industries derived from the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

The results suggest that international connectedness increases the accessibility of foreign knowledge and helps the accumulation of technological capability. Thus, this paper provides a better understanding that international connectedness can be critical for exploiting knowledge dispersed worldwide and influencing intra- and interindustry knowledge-sourcing behavior in the home country.

While prior studies have mainly paid attention to the relationship between parents and subsidiaries in foreign countries for international knowledge sourcing, the authors attempt to analyze international and local knowledge sourcing with a broader set of knowledge sourcing channels at an aggregate level. By considering an industry’s export intensity and inward foreign direct investment, this study reveals specifically how the extent of an industry’s international connectedness influences knowledge sourcing from both abroad and locally.

Previous studies have reached inconsistent conclusions on foreign direct investment (FDI) technology spillovers and corporate innovation. The main purpose of this paper is to explore the technological spillover effects of FDI from the microperspective of firm linkages induced by geographic distance. Further analysis is conducted on the impact and mechanism of this spillover on the innovation quality of Chinese enterprises. The conclusions drawn from this paper can guide Chinese enterprises' foreign capital utilization and innovation strategy choices.

Using the data of China's A-share listed companies from 2009 to 2019, this paper explores the role of FDI technology spillover in enterprise innovation quality through a two-way fixed-effect model. The robustness of the results is proven by substituting variables, adding industry fixed effects and excluding high-profit groups, and further using the two-stage least squares (2SLS) method to alleviate the empirical endogeneity problem.

These findings indicate that FDI technology spillover based on geographic proximity has a positive impact on the innovation quality of Chinese enterprises. However, there are different impacts for different types of enterprises. FDI technology spillover has a positive impact on the innovation quality of non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs) and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), while it has no effect on state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and large enterprises. The authors also find that the degree of financing constraints and R&D investment are important transmission mechanisms between FDI technology spillover and enterprise innovation quality.

This study ignores industry characteristics when considering foreign enterprises around Chinese enterprises. In fact, technology spillover effects differ across industries. When the authors matched microdata to regions, only the provincial level was considered. Therefore, there is still room for further research. In future research, the authors should consider industry characteristics and group foreign enterprises and Chinese enterprises in the same industry and in different industries to explore industry differences in technology spillover. In addition, when matching corporate data to regions, the authors can match to the city level and draw city-level conclusions.

This study is different from previous studies that focus on the quantity of enterprise innovation or innovation output. The authors focus on the role of technological spillovers in the quality of Chinese enterprise innovation, enriching research in the field of enterprise innovation quality. In addition, the current FDI technology spillover indicators are technically difficult to measure at the micro level. The authors draw inspiration from the theory of the geographical structure of financial supply and combine the creation methods of macro and micro indicators in existing articles in other fields. The authors ingeniously construct a new FDI technical spillover indicator. This indicator combines the commonly used regional FDI technology spillover with the geographic proximity of enterprises at the microlevel by constructing an interaction term between the two. This indicator not only alleviates the endogeneity problem to a certain extent but also has implications for future research in the field of FDI technology spillovers at the micro level.

(1) FDI technology spillovers are an effective way to improve the innovation quality of local enterprises, especially for non-SOEs and SMEs. Therefore, The authors suggest that in the context of dual circulation, the Chinese government should continue to open wider to the outside world and encourage foreign enterprises to invest in China. (2) In future development, managers of SOEs and large enterprises should create an innovation incentive mechanism. Moreover, they should change their vertical management structure and make full use of their policy advantages and budget advantages to increase innovation activities. In the process of acquiring technology spillovers, enterprises need to solve their own financing constraints.

First, this study solves a technical problem. It is technically difficult to measure the current FDI technical spillover indicators at the micro level. This study innovatively constructs a new FDI technology spillover indicator that combines regional FDI technology spillovers with the microperspective of the geographical proximity of enterprises. This approach not only alleviates certain endogeneity problems in the empirical evidence but also enriches relevant research in the field of technology spillover. In addition, this study focuses on the impact and mechanism of this spillover, which addresses the current research gap among previous studies that mainly focus on innovation quantity and ignore innovation quality.

Although scholars in strategic management have identified innovating and exit as firms’ two sequential strategic responses to long-run crisis, the potential interdependency has yet remained implicit. Specifically, in the context of Chinese Privately Owned Enterprises (POEs), this study investigates the interrelationship of these two strategic responses during long-run crisis. Building on resource redeployment perspective, the authors propose that firms tend to simultaneously leverage innovating and exit responses.

The authors use the data from the 2010 Chinese POEs survey to verify how firms in the long-term crisis made strategic responses after the 2008 financial crisis. Besides, the authors utilize Probit regressions as the basic analysis and further employ bivariate Probit regressions to conduct robustness tests.

This study provides empirical evidence confirming that firms in the long-run period of the crisis tend to adopt both exit and innovating strategies at the same time, that is, the strategy of resource redeployment. Moreover, this study further finds that government subsidies, the degree of marketization and firm’s organizational capability could all accentuate the decision-making of firms’ resource redeployment.

The authors thus contribute to the study of strategic responses to crisis in strategic management by dynamically find out the interdependency of two responses and enrich the research on resource redeployment perspective by identifying three influential positive antecedents, adding to the ongoing investigation on positive drivers of resource redeployment.

A serious problem in the pandemic days is that in this period many firms face difficulties with remaining on the market. It causes that the entrepreneurs do not undertake activities which could result in introducing innovations. In this context, the authors examine new mechanisms which lead competitive economy to the long-run equilibrium under the assumption that producers are change-averse.

The results have the form of theorems with rigorous proofs and provide the ideas on the way of developing the economic policy in respect of firms in the pandemic days.

As a result, the authors justify that in some cases it is worth leading an economic sector or a whole economy to the long-run equilibrium state.

The authors show that there exists a mechanism in the sense of Hurwicz which transforms the economy into an economic system being in the long-run equilibrium as well as the authors determine optimal mechanisms, under the criterion of distance minimization, in some subsets of the mechanisms designed.

To answer the questions: what roles windows of opportunity act in the catchup process of latecomers, what strategies latecomer enterprises should adopt to size windows of opportunity to catch-up with incumbents even going beyond?

This paper studies the catch-up history of the Chinese mobile phone industry and proposes a sectoral innovation system under scenario of technology paradigm shifts. Then a history-friendly simulation model and counterfactual analysis are conducted to learn how different windows of opportunity and catch-up strategies influence the catch-up performance of latecomers.

Results show latecomers can catch up with technology ability by utilizing technology window and path-creating strategy. However, catching up with the market is not guaranteed. Demand window can help latecomers to catch up with market as it increases their survival rates, different sized windows benefit different strategies. However, it also enlarges incumbents' scale effect. Without technology window technology catch up is not guaranteed. Two windows have combination effects. Demand window affects the “degree” of change in survival rates, while the technology window affects the “speed” of change. Demand window provides security; technology window provides the possibility of a breakthrough for technology ability.

The findings of this paper provide theoretical guidance for latecomer enterprises to choose appropriate catch-up strategies to seize different opportunity windows.

This paper emphasizes the abrupt change of industrial innovation system caused by technology paradigm shifts, which makes up for the shortcomings of previous researches on industrial innovation system which either studied the influence of static factors or based on the influence of continuous changes.

This paper aims to reveal how different types of events and top management teams' (TMTs’) cognitive frames affect the generation of breakthrough innovations.

Drawing on the event system theory and upper echelon theory, this study chose a Chinese manufacturing enterprise as the case firm and conducted an exploratory single-case study to unpack how breakthrough innovation generates over time.

By conducting the in-depth case analysis, the study revealed that firms do not produce breakthrough innovation in the catch-up stage and parallel-running stage but achieve it in the leading stage. It also indicated that when facing proactive events in the catch-up stage, TMTs often adopt a contracted lens, being manifested as consistency orientation, less elastic organizational identity and narrower competitive boundaries. In addition, they tend to adopt a contracted lens when facing reactive and proactive events in the parallel-running stage. In the face of reactive and proactive events in the leading stage, they are more inclined to adopt an expanded lens, being manifested as a coexistence orientation, more elastic organizational identity and wider competitive boundaries.

First, by untangling how TMT's cognitive frame functions in breakthrough innovations, this paper provides a micro-foundation for producing breakthrough innovations and deepens the understanding of upper echelon theory by considering the cognitive dimension of TMTs. Second, by teasing out several typical events experienced by the firm, this paper is the first attempt to reveal how events affect the generation of breakthrough innovation. Third, the work extends the application of the event system theory in technological innovation. It also provides insightful implications for promoting breakthrough innovations by considering the role of proactive and reactive events a firm experiences and TMT's perceptions.

An alliance portfolio can help latecomer firms to acquire the necessary knowledge and resources to catch up with market leaders. However, how latecomer firms construct an alliance portfolio in terms of the nature of windows of opportunity has not been fully analyzed. This paper aims to explore how latecomer firms can build appropriate coalitions according to the nature of the window of opportunity to achieve technological catch-up in different catch-up phases.

Based on a longitudinal case study from 1984 to 2018 of Sunny Group, now a leading manufacturer of integrated optical components and products, this paper explores the process of technological catch-up of latecomer firms building different types of alliance portfolio in different windows of opportunity.

This paper finds that there is a sequence when latecomers build an alliance portfolio in the process of catch-up. When the uncertainty of opportunity increases, the governance mechanism of the alliance portfolio will change from contractual to equity-based. Also, latecomer firms build market-dominated and technology-dominated alliance portfolios to overcome their market and technology disadvantages, respectively.

These conclusions not only enrich the theory of latecomer catch-up from the perspective of windows of opportunity but also expand research on alliance portfolio processes from a temporal perspective.

By examining the impact of product innovation on abnormal financial returns following the launch of new products, this study aims to test the explanatory power of a new compound measure of product innovativeness (Ganbaatar and Douglas, 2019).

It is a longitudinal study in which the authors used the compound product innovativeness score (CPIS) for the first time to measure product innovativeness. The abnormal financial returns are estimated through the event study design, where four different models are used. Artificial neural network analysis is done to determine the impact of the CPIS on abnormal returns by utilising a hexic polynomial regression model.

The authors find effect sizes that substantially exceed practically significant levels and that the CPIS explain 65% of the variance in the firm’s abnormal returns in market valuation. Moreover, new-to-the-market novelty predicts 83% of the variation, while new-to-the-firm (catch-up) innovation insignificantly impacts firm value.

This paper demonstrates how the CPIS, an objective and direct measure of product innovativeness, can be used to gain more insight into the innovation effect.

Implications for the business practice of this study include the necessity of relentless innovation by firms in contested differentiated markets, particularly where technological advance is ongoing. Larger and mature firms must practice corporate entrepreneurship to renew their products on a continuous basis to avoid slipping backwards in their markets. Innovation leadership, rather than following the leader, is also important to increase competitive advantage, given the result that innovation followship does not produce abnormal financial returns.

In this study, the authors focused on the effect of product innovativeness on firm performance. While the literature affirms a positive relationship between innovation and firm performance, the effect size of this relationship varies, due largely to the authors contend to simplistic measures of innovativeness. In this study, the authors adopt the relatively novel “compound” measure of product innovativeness (Ganbaatar and Douglas, 2019) to better encapsulate the nuances of both technical novelty and market novelty. This measure of product innovativeness is applicable to firms of all sizes but is more easily applied to entrepreneurial new ventures and SMEs, and it avoids the shortcomings of prior firm-level and subjective measures of innovativeness for both smaller and larger firms. Using a more effective analytical method (Artificial Neural Network), the authors investigated whether there is a “practically” significant effect size due to product innovation, which could be valuable for entrepreneurs in practice. The authors show that the CPIS measure can very effectively explain abnormalities in the stock market, exhibiting a moderate effect size and explaining 65% of the variation in abnormal returns.