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This study aims to explore the relationship between financing constraints and the innovation performance of Internet enterprises in the cross-border innovation cooperation network. The study also analyzes the moderating effect of the location of the cross-border innovation cooperation network.

The authors selected patent data, related transaction data and other data of A-share listed companies on Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2014 to 2019. The generalized moment estimation method of instrumental variables (IV-GMM) method was used to analyze the relationship between financing constraints and the innovation performance of Internet firms and the moderating effect of the cross-border innovation cooperation network location. The threshold value of the moderating effect of the network structure hole was calculated with the threshold model.

The empirical results show a significant inverted U-shaped relationship between financing constraints and the innovation performance in the cross-border innovation cooperation network of Internet enterprises. Network centrality positively moderates this relationship. There is a threshold for the adjustment effect of network-structural holes, and the adjustment intensity of structural holes changes before and after the threshold.

This study provides a new perspective for Internet firms in innovation cooperation networks to alleviate the negative impact of financing constraints on innovation performance. The inverted U-shaped relationship between financing constraints and the innovation performance of Internet enterprises is in two stages. The moderating range of network centrality and the structural hole besides the threshold of the moderating effect of a structural hole are detailed.

Research on financing for entrepreneurship has consolidated over the last decade. However, one question remains unanswered: how does the combination of external finance, such as equity and debt capital, and internal finance, such as working capital, affect the likelihood of grant funding over time? The purpose of this study is to analyse the relationship between different sources of financing and firms' ability to fundraise via innovation grants and to examine the role of female chief executive officer (CEO) in this relationship. Unlike equity and debt funding, innovation grants manifest a form of innovation acknowledgement and visibility, recognition of potential commercialization of inovation.

The authors use firm-level financial data for 3,034 high-growth firms observed in 2015, 2017 and 2019 across 35 emerging sectors in the United Kingdom (UK) to test the factors affecting the propensity of high-growth firms to secure an innovation grant as a main source of fundraising for innovation during the early stages of product commercialization.

The results do not confirm gender bias for innovation fundraising in new industries. This contrasts with prior research in the field which has demonstrated that access to finance is gender-biased. However, the role of CEO gender is important as it moderates the relationship between the sources of funding and the likelihood of accessing the grant funding.

This study does not analyse psychological or neurological factors that could determine the intrinsic qualities of male and female CEOs when making high-risk decisions under conditions of uncertainty related to innovation. Direct gender bias with regards to access to innovation grants could not be assumed. This study offers important policy implications and explains how firms in new industries can increase their likelihood of accessing a grant and how CEO gender can moderate the relationship between availability of internal and external funding and securing a new grant.

This study implicates and empirically demonstrates that gender bias does not apply in fundraising for innovation in new industries. As female CEOs represent various firms in different sectors, this may be an important signal for investors in new product development and innovation policies targeting gender bias and inclusion.

The authors draw on female entrepreneurship and feminist literature to demonstrate how various sources of financing and gender change the likelihood of grant funding in both the short and long run. This is the first empirical study which aims to explain how various internal and external sources of finance change the propensity of securing an innovation grant in new industries.

In recent years, the application of blockchain in enterprise financing has become a hot topic in academic research. This study aims to review the existing literature, construct a knowledge framework for this research topic and propose an agenda for future research.

Based on 181 papers published from 2016 to 2020 in core journal databases in China and abroad, this study used bibliometric tools to identify and analyze an overview of literature publications, research hotspot trends and research theme clustering. This study also qualitatively analyzes literature from the dimensions of enabling mechanisms, multitechnology synergy, challenges, theoretical perspectives and research methods.

This study presents the research progress of blockchain applications in direct financing, bank credit, supply chain finance and other financing modes and analyzes the similarities and differences between domestic and international literature. This study also reveals enabling mechanisms of blockchain in enterprise financing, reflected as information quality improvement (data elements), trust mechanism innovation (business process) and collaboration structure enhancement (network structure). The study found several challenges (e.g. technological uncertainty, data security and organizational change) and trends (e.g. integrated innovation of multiple digital technologies). Additionally, the authors identified several gaps and opportunities for further research.

This study adopts a strict strategy of selecting search terms when retrieving the literature, leading to the exclusion of certain papers on this topic.

This study provides valuable insights into the innovative development of enterprise financing modes enabled by blockchain and emphasizes that managers should clarify the applicable boundaries and necessary conditions of blockchain innovation in different financing scenarios to match technological innovation with industrial expectations.

This study constructs a knowledge framework on this topic based on a comprehensive review of existing research and proposes several important issues for future research based on the identified research gaps.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on company innovation, specifically centering on the quantity and quality of innovation. The paper aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of whether the epidemic inhibits innovation and the role of digital transformation in mitigating this negative impact.

The paper uses a quasi-experimental study of the COVID-19 pandemic and constructs a differential model to analyze the relationship between the epidemic and firm innovation in three dimensions: total, quantity and quality. The paper also uses a difference-in-difference-in-differences model to test whether digital transformation of firms mitigates the negative impact of the epidemic and its mechanism of action.

The results show that COVID-19 significantly reduced the overall level of firm innovation, primarily in terms of quantity rather than quality. Furthermore, this study finds that digital transformation plays a pivotal role in mitigating the pandemic’s adverse impact on innovation. By addressing financing constraints and countering demand insufficiency, digital transformation acts as a catalyst for preserving and fostering innovation during and after the pandemic.

This study extends the current research on the pandemic’s impact on firm innovation at the micro level. It offers valuable insights into strategies for fostering digital transformation among Chinese enterprises in the post-pandemic era.

In this paper, the author examines how capital structure (relative to target) affects firm innovation.

The author uses cross-sectional OLS regressions (for each year of data) to determine whether a firm is above or below its target debt level (in that year) and then uses fixed effects OLS regressions with panel data to examine the impact of having leverage above or below the firm's target on its innovation activity.

The author shows that firms with below-target debt innovate more in terms of number of patents granted and have better quality innovations in terms of citation counts of patents and in terms of economic value of patents. The results hold for sample splits based on firm age, firm size and access to external finance. The author also shows that the findings are not driven by the negative correlation between leverage and innovation measures. Overall, the results indicate that it is not the actual level of leverage that impacts innovation; the relevant factor that impacts firm innovation is whether a firm is above or below its leverage target.

The author extends the literature on financing innovation by linking leverage target with firm innovation. Findings of this paper also provide supporting evidence that capital structure plays an important role on firm innovation and supplements prior literature that shows the importance of debt in financing firm innovation.

Access to financing is a key success factor for start-ups. High failure rates, long payback periodse and asymmetries lead to conservative pricing and valuation discounts. The authors examine financial marketing and contingent factors, as enablers of a “patent premium” by private equity (PE) investors targeting start-ups in their growth and expansion stages.

Drawing from the contingency, innovation and signaling theories, the authors collect patent records for Italian start-ups in which a higher than 30% stake was acquired by PE investors during the period 2014–2020. The authors apply a generalized linear model with a logit link and robust clustered error to test the key relationships and control for endogeneity with a Heckman two-stage selection model.

Findings indicate start-ups’ access to financing is significantly impacted by marketing constructs adopted in the operation. Innovation alone does not suffice to determine a valuation premium, unless contingent on the promotion of its product, the placement -investors targeted-of the equity, brand equity levers of previous ownership and marketing competence backing the deal.

The authors provide new insights in the marketing-finance interface, highlighting levers that reassure investors and enable monetizing innovation in start-ups that are still privately held. The authors bridge a gap in literature that has mainly focused on venture capital and innovation financing in the open market, as well as a significant gap regarding the marketing design of private equity placements.

In recent years, environmental issues and resource depletion have posed significant challenges to firms and society. To address these environmental challenges, firms seek to build strategic alliances of green supply chain management (GSCM) with their supply chain partner. As the largest developing country in the Asia–Pacific region, China needs to take more responsibility for environmental protection, which requires more Chinese firms to participate in GSCM. Therefore, focusing on the issue of GSCM and innovation persistence in the context of an increasingly harsh ecological environment is essential.

To test the hypothesis, the authors perform an empirical analysis on a sample of 124 listed firms in China from 2014 to 2019. The results are robust to a battery of robustness analyses the authors performed to take care of endogeneity.

Empirical results indicate that GSCM can promote innovation persistence and both market environment turbulence and technology environment turbulence have a positive moderating effect on the relationship between the two. Mechanism tests show that GSCM can improve innovation efficiency, ensure innovation quality and alleviate financing constraints, thus promoting the innovation persistence of firms.

This study can provide a theoretical basis for the country to promote GSCM orientation, raise firms' awareness of the value of GSCM, convey the significance of GSCM to investors, influence firms' investment decisions and give experience to other developing countries.

This paper aims to employ the use of focus groups composed of enforcement officers to explore and identify the financial methods used by terrorism-related organisations in Malaysia.

The study used an open-ended question and focus group methods to gather information from 20 Malaysian enforcement officers with extensive experience in dealing with terrorism-related activities, as they strive to prevent and counter terrorism incidents. In addition, experienced practitioners and field experts also contributed to the study.

The study reveals various innovative financial methods used by terrorist-linked organisations to evade detection by local enforcement agencies. These findings are consistent with previous research, which highlights the intelligence of these organisations in avoiding detection by financial regulators.

The findings are based on the perspectives of enforcement officers involved in preventing and countering terrorism activities. Further research could be conducted to gather insights from other government agencies, such as the judiciary or local agencies.

The study offers practical suggestions for organisations and institutions on effectively monitoring and taking appropriate actions in financial activities related to terrorism.

This study provides unique insights into the financial methods of terrorism-related organisations in an emerging country in Southeast Asia. Its findings can be applied throughout the region, given the country’s global connectivity. Furthermore, the study is distinctive in that it provides information from enforcement officers within terrorism-related government organisations, an area where resources are limited. The study also considers the impact of the pandemic on the development of these financial innovations by terrorist organisations.

The relationship between industrial policy and exploratory innovation is imperfect.

The authors use Chinese high-tech enterprise identification policy (HTEP) as a natural experimental group to test policy impacts, spillover effects and mechanisms of action.

First, HTEP promotes exploratory innovation. In addition, HTEP has a greater impact on non-exploratory innovation. Second, HTEP has spillover effects in two phases: HTEP (2008) and the 2016 policy reform. HTEP affects exploratory innovation in nearby non-high-tech firms, and the policy effect decreases monotonically with increasing distance from the treatment group. Third, HTEP affects innovation capacity through financing constraints, technical personnel flow and knowledge flow, which explains not only policy effects but also spillover effects. Fourth, the analysis of policy heterogeneity shows that the 2016 policy reforms reinforce the positive effect of HTEP (2008). By deducting the effects of other policies, the HTEP effect is found to be less volatile. In terms of the continuity of policy identification, continuous uninterrupted identification has a crucial impact on the improvement of firms’ innovation capacity compared to repeated certification and certification expiration. Finally, HTEP has a crowding-out effect in state-owned enterprises and large firms’ innovation.

This paper contributes to the existing literature in several ways. First, the authors enrich the literature on industrial policy through exploratory innovation research. While previous studies have focused on R&D investment and patents (Dai and Wang, 2019), exploratory innovation helps firms break away from the inherent knowledge mindset and achieve sustainable innovation. Second, few studies have explored the characteristics of industrial policies. In this paper, the authors subdivide the sample into repeated certification, continuous certification and certification expiration according to high-tech enterprise identification. In addition, the authors compare the differences in policy implementation effects between the 2016 policy reform and the 2008 policy to provide new directions for business managers and policy makers. Third, innovation factors guided by industrial policies may cluster in specific regions, which in turn manifest externalities. This is when the policy spillover effect is worth considering. This paper fills a gap in the industrial policy literature by examining the spillover effects. Finally, this paper also explores the mechanisms of policy effects from three perspectives: financing constraints, technician mobility and knowledge mobility, which can affect not only the innovation of beneficiary firms directly but also indirectly the innovation of neighboring non-beneficiary firms.

This article empirically tests the impact of risk appetite of the executive team on the re-innovation strategy after technological innovation failure using a panel regression model from the perspective of regional financial development level of enterprises.

By means of time series global principal component analysis and panel regression model method, the study validated and analyzed the impact of risk appetite of the executive team on the re-innovation strategy after enterprise technological innovation failure.

The research found that the higher the risk appetite of executive team, the more inclined the enterprise is to choose the “focusing on quantity, ignoring quality” re-innovation strategy after technological innovation failure. The better the financial development level of the region where the enterprise is located, the better it can effectively reduce the re-innovation strategy of “focusing on quantity, ignoring quality” of the enterprise due to the high risk appetite of the executive team.

The findings of this study are helpful in improving the financial development level of the region where the enterprise is located. It can help the executive team of the enterprise to more objectively choose the innovation strategy after technological innovation failure, and reduce the phenomenon that the executive team of the enterprise only pays attention to the quantity of re-innovation and underestimates the quality of re-innovation after technological innovation failure due to its high risk appetite.