Empirical Study On The Relationships Between Innovation Networking And Knowledge Acquisition Based On Firm Resources

Now we are in a great new era of cooperative technology innovation. More and more high-technology new ventures have been taking part in the inter-firm cooperation innovation network aiming for smooth knowledge acquisition and high innovation performance. Empirical observations on the use of inter-firm network ties seem to guide managers in two directions. On the one hand, external network ties are important and beneficial to innovations in the knowledge acquisition. On the other hand, inter-firm relationships may constrain a firm's innovation knowledge acquisition and the following technology innovation being of undue embedded network ties. Much research effort has been expended to explain why inter-firm network ties or alliances engender different effects on different firms. However, it has not been fully uncovered about the paradox of how and when innovation network facilitate or constrain entrepreneurial activities, such as technology innovation. Moreover we wander whether high-technology firms are able to construct effective innovation network or not, and whether institution environment will have an effect on innovation networking or not under Chinese transitional economy background.To address these issues, we study the relationship between inter-firm innovation network and knowledge acquisition, and go further into the question of the impact of firms'resources condition on this relationship in the context of China transitional economy. Specifically, This dissertation explores these issues by investigating the following framing questions: (1) What is the effect of firm resources on the innovation network; (2) What is the effect of innovation network on innovation knowledge acquisition; (3) What is the moderating effect of firm resources on the relationship of innovation network and innovation knowledge acquisition; (4) What is the moderating effect of institution support on the relationship of firm resources and innovation network.We combined theoretical study and empirical study, literature review and investigation, and as well as qualitative research and quantitative research to explore those research issues. At first, we defined the basic concepts based on literature review. Firm resources can be classified knowledge resources and network resources. The features of innovation network comprise the number of ties and the strength of ties. The assessment of knowledge acquisition performance consists of the effectiveness of partnership and the effectiveness of knowledge acquisition. Institution environment is represented by institution support. Building on the literatures and the basic concepts, this study proposes a model that suggests there is a significant relationship between innovation knowledge acquisition and the innovation network, and this relationship is moderated by the firm resources. The model also suggested that there is a significant relationship between the innovation network and firm resources, and this relationship is moderated by institution support.Using survey approach, this study examined ventures from high-technology industries located in economic and technological development zone, and we gathered information about innovation networking and inter-firm knowledge acquisition via questionnaires. Statistic analysis methods are conducted on the valid data. These methods include Pearson correlation, factor analysis conducted to verify the measures validation, and multivariate regression used to test the hypotheses and modify the concept model. The results show that innovation network is related positively to the knowledge acquisition, and the relation is moderated by firm resources partially. The results also suggest a negative relationship between firm resources and innovation network, and the relation is moderated by institution support partially. Drawing on the above research, some conclusions can be presented as follows. The more ties numbers ventures cooperate with other organizations, the more effective communications among partners will be about learning, and then the more quantity they acquired innovation knowledge from the cooperation process of technology innovation project. The stronger ties ventures cooperate with other organizations, the more effective communications between partners will be about learning, and then the more they acquired innovation knowledge from the cooperation process of technology innovation project. Ventures often want to take part in new network ties with other organizations to achieve innovation knowledge, when they own less knowledge resources. Ventures often want to construct a strong network ties with other organizations to achieve innovation knowledge, when they own less network resources. If ventures are in the lower knowledge resources condition, the effects on their knowledge acquisition performance are not much significant from network ties numbers. If there are support from government agencies, such as financing and technology, the effects on their innovation networking activities are not much important from knowledge resources owned by ventures.Focusing on the concepts framework of relationships among firm resources, innovation network and knowledge acquisition, this dissertation contributes some exploratory achievements as follows. The first contributions are considerations of firm resources'moderating effects on the relationship between innovation network and knowledge acquisition. The second are considerations of institution support's moderating effects on the relationship between firm resources and innovation network. As well as we examined how ventures acquired innovation knowledge by inter-firm network in the context of Chinese transitional economy. Those contributions extended inter-organizational relationships literature and innovation literature, and have some implications for managersDespite some contributions to the literature and practice, this study has limitations that should be addressed in future research. First, much attention is paid on innovation networking and knowledge acquisition of an innovation project which is a temporary organizational setting. So the cross-sectional data used in the study do not allow causal interpretations among the variables. In the future a study would have benefited from a time-lagged longitudinal between the measurement of the independent and dependent variables for causal relationships to be determined. Second, there is potential bias on gathering sample data because we randomly selected ventures from Changchun city and Tonghua city although these two cities are located in Jilin province, while not from Jilin province. To enhance the generalizability of the findings, future research ought to build on these results and examine the relationships in other places in China. Third, our theoretical model focuses on only a few internal and external factors. Other potentially relevant variables may influence innovation network and knowledge acquisition. Other theoretic perspective warrants research in the future. Finally, we use five-point Likert scale to measure variables based on subjective assessment data from questionnaires. Research results will be verified and reliable, if more objective measurement methods are use in the future research.