The Research On The Relationship Between Firm’s Koweledge Base,Open Innovation And Innovation Performance

In the era of globalization, knowledge economy and network economy, enterprises are facing with more and more intense, unstable and uncertain competition environment. Knowledge has become the most important factor that influences enterprise’s sustainable competitive advantage. In such circumstance, enterprise technology innovation is not only highly dependent on internal knowledge base, but also connected with external knowledge sources which are considered to be the external knowledge base of a firm. The breadth and depth of enterprise internal knowledge base and external knowledge base can jointly influence or even determine scope、space、direction and routine of enterprise technology innovation, and drive the process of enterprise technology innovation, which ultimately bring difference of innovaton performance among firms. Open innovation can propell an enterprise to take innovation activities inside and outside of the enterprise boundary, which helps the firm dig up sources of competitive advantage from increasingly rich know-how, intellectual property rights and competitiveness inside or outside the firm. However, how and to what extent that the breadth and depth of enterprise internal and external knowledge base influence two kinds of different level of innovation performance — — incremental innovation and radical innovation, and how the two types of open innovation——inbound open innovation and outbound open innovation exert key influence between knowledge base and innovation performance, are still required further research. By using the analysis tools of SPSS22\ Nvivo10\ Smart PLS2.0\MPLUS6.12, the dissertation adopts both qualitative and quantitative research methods, tries to solve these related problems. Finally, the paper gets some interesting findings and conclusions.Firstly, from the perspective of organizational boundary, a firm’s knowledge base includes internal knowledge base and external knowledge base. The breadth and depth of internal knowledge base and external knowledge base, which are internal knowledge breadth, internal knowledge depth, knowledge linkage breadth, knowledge linkage depth, have significant positive impact on its incremental innovation and radical innovation. What’s more, comparing with external knowledge base, improving the breadth and depth of internal knowledge base can bring more incremental innovation and radical innovation. What’s more, more diversified interal knowledge elements as well as heterogeneous external knowledge sources a firm holds can help the firm achieve more radical innovation.Secondly, both inbound open innovation and outbound open innovation have positive influence on incremental innovation and radical innovation, which means that the behaviors of exploitation of external knowledge or exploration of internal knowledge can bring benefits when a firm tries to achieve innovation performance. Both inbound open innovation and outbound open innovation have higher impact on radical innovation than that on incremental innovation. In addition, the influence of inbound open innovation on both incremental innovation and radical innovation is greater than outbound open innovation.Thirdly, both internal and external knowledge base has positive impact on open innovation. Specifically, the higher level of internal knowledge breath and knowledge linkage depth of a firm, the more beneficial to its inbound open innovation.. However, higher level of internal knowledge breadth and knowledge linkage breadth a firm holds is more beneficial to its outbound open innovation.Fourthly, open innovation plays a partial moderated role between nterprise knowledge base and innovation performance, as well as radical innovation. Specifically, internal knowledge breadth, internal knowledge depth, knowledge linkage breadth and knowledge linkage depth all can influence incremental innovation through inbound open innovation as well as radical innovation. Internal knowledge breadth、knowledge linkage breadth and knowledge linkage depth can influence incremental innovation and radical innovation through outbound open innovation. These conclusions support the core and important status that open innovation plays between firm’s knowledge base and different level of innovation performance.Fifthly, we find that a firm’s centralization of decision making positively mediates the relationship between inbound open innovation and radical innovation. What’s more, a firm’s centralization of decision making positively mediates the relationship between outbound open innovation and incremental and radical innovation. However, formalization of a firm has negative mediated impact on the relationship between inbound open innovation and incremental innovation. Through an extended research, we also find that the indirect effect of firm’s knowledge base through open innovation on incremental innovation and radical innovation can also be mediated by a firm’s centralization of decision making and formalization. Among that, under the condition of lower formalization, the indirect effect of internal knowledge breadth, internal knowledge depth, knowledge linkage breadth, knowledge linkage depth on incremental innovation——which is through inbound open innovation——will be stronger. In addition, under the condition of higher centralization of decision making, the indirect effect of internal knowledge breadth, internal knowledge depth, knowledge linkage breadth, knowledge linkage depth on radical innovation will be stronger. Meanwhile, under the condition of higher centralization of decision making, the indirect effect of internal knowledge breadth, knowledge linkage breadth, knowledge linkage depth on radical innovation——which is through inbound open innovation——will be stronger.Under the background and development of the era of globalization, knowledge economy and network economy, the study verifies the influence of the breadth and depth of a firm’s internal and external knowledge base on incremental innovation as well as radical innovation. What’s more, the study finds the positive impact of both inbound and outbound open innovation on incremental innovation as well as radical innovation. We also find that open innovation can play a moderated role between enterprise knowledge base and incremental and radical innovation. These findings can offer some practical enlightenment for Chinese enterprises, which also provide related decision-making reference for Chinese government work such as collaborative innovation, innovative enterprise construction, etc. In addition, the thesis not only enriches research on open innovation, but also further helps advance the connection among knowledge theory, open innovation, technology innovation theory and organization theory.