Effects Of Value Network On Innovation Performance

"New economy", with the essence of informatization and globalization, emerges to evoke unprecedentedly profound change to industrial environment and the patterns for operations and development within firm. Grounded on the reality, such new economy forces firm to develop new business model to adapt the new environment. At the same time, digital economy greatly hampers the power of traditional economies of scale and scope, whereas the advent of industry segmentation and collaboration ends the era of independent competitions of firms. Nowadays, firms are faced with the change of industrial competition triggered by "network orchestration", namely the emergence of value network, which offers more possibilities for business model design. In line with heated topic of "E-business model" promoted by the development of network, business model also drew increasing attention, though the academic discussion currently at the infancy stage. There exists prevailing recognition to the effect of business model design on the innovation performance, however, the specific mechanism to open the black box is to be explored further. On the other hand, taking account of firm value network, especially when firms in mainland China embedded into global value network, the question how to design business model requires to be addressed further.Driven by the reality and the theoretical gap, the study integrated the theory of value network, business model design, and organizational learning, revealed both industrial environment and firm internal capabilities, and figured out the relationship among value network, business model, organizational learning and innovation performance, taking account of the moderating effect of environment turbulence, market-oriented strategy and strategic flexibility. And it would be addressed in two related studies:(1) exploring the influencing mechanism of value network to business model design, based on the contingent perspective;(2) figuring out the mediation role of organizational learning in the relationship of business model design and innovation performance. The second study could also be divided into two parts, with one focusing on internal capabilities and revealing how organizational learning mediates business model design and innovation performance by case study, and the other empirically testing this mediation effect as well as the moderator role of strategic flexibility. In line with hypothesis testing and result analysis, the study drew the following conclusions.1Characteristics of value network significantly influence business model design.Network centrality is positively related to the efficiency-centered and novelty-centered business model design, while tie strength significantly has positive effect on efficiency-centered business model design, but negative on novelty-centered business model innovation. At last, network scale also has a positive effect on both types of business model design.2Environment turbulence and market orientation play a moderating role in the association between value network and business model design. With high environment turbulence, the effect of network centrality on novelty-centered business model design, strength on efficiency-centered business model design and novelty-centered business model design is hampered. Market orientation enhances the effect of network centrality on efficiency-centered and novelty-centered business model design, as well as the impact of tie strength on efficiency-centered business model design.3Organizational learning plays mediating role between business model design and innovation performance. The explorative learning significantly mediates the relationship between novelty-centered business model design and innovation performance. Exploitative learning significantly mediates the relationship between efficiency-centered business model design and innovation performance.4Strategic flexibility moderates the associations between business model and innovation performance. Resource flexibility and Coordination flexibility both positively moderate the associations between efficiency-centered business model design and innovation performance, and high resource flexibility also negatively influence the relationship between efficiency-centered business model design on innovation performance.Business model is regarded as strategic issue within modern firms, especially in value network context. In line with three related studies, this study contributes to the research field as follows.1. From a new perspective-business model design, this study constructs the model of value network’s impact on innovation performance. Based on the literature of value network, business model design, organizational learning, innovation performance, this study constructs the model of "value network-business model design-innovation performance", and systematically unfolds and illustrates how value network influence innovation performance by analyzing and integrating two sub-models of "value network-business model design" and "business model design-organizational learning-innovation performance".2. By applying the moderators of environment turbulence and market orientation, this study discusses the value network on both novelty-centered and efficiency-centered business model design, and enriches the value network literature. The findings could help Chinese firms that are embedded in global network to better compete in breaking through from low-locked status. They could take advantage of dual role of network, optimize their own value network and design more suitable business model, realizing the transition from imitation to innovation.3. The study opens black-box of business model and innovation performance by discussing the mediating effect of organization learning between business model and innovation performance, and illustrates the important role of strategic flexibility, which moderates the relationships among business model, organization learning and innovation performance. It provides implications on the local firms’action to adjust strategic flexibility to business model and organization learning mode. As such, firms could achieve good match of resource and capability, leading to maximization of organization advantage value.