The Relationship Between Properties Of Knowledge, Network Topology And Corporation Innovation Performance

With the rapid development of knowledge and network economy, information technology is often used in the fields of firms' production and administration. The change of technology is faster than before since 1990's. Because of the fierce competition in the marketplace, the life of production becomes shorter. For the firms' environment has been changing quickly, they are often alliying to deal with innovation. The key to survive and develop for company is persisting corporation innovation. The performance of corporation innovation is depending on the high level of absorptive capacity which can be used to get outside knowledge from different corporation networks. Transforming that knowledge into effective corporation innovation, the firm can get success in the fierce competition. It is the key question of this research to put all important influencing variable of corporation innovation together in a systematic manner and reveal the inside affection of them.Referenced the former researchers' contribution, this research utilizes innovation theory, knowledge management theory, organization learning theory, network relationship theory and corporation absorptive capacity theory to formalize a model of the influencing variable of corporation innovation performance and some interrelated hypothesis. Then, Visual Basic .NET 2005 programmer is adopted to emulate the process of corporation innovation. 8748 records are gotten after the simulation. The SPSS15.0 software is used to test the model and hypotheses. At last, this research chooses questionnaire survey and gets 151 availability records. Using SPSS15.0 software, this study analyzes the records to test the model and hypotheses again and find out whether the results are confirm to the simulation.After above analysis, this research gets the results as follows:(1) The properties of knowledge's effect on corporation innovation performance are different. There is no negative relationship between the levels of knowledge properties, such as tacitness, ambiguity and complexity, and corporation innovation performance. In fact, corporation innovation needs more ambiguity and complexity knowledge. For technique innovation, the most important step is to acquire the tacitness knowledge. But for management and market innovation, the assimilation and exploitation of ambiguity and complexity knowledge are the most important steps.(2) The precondition of corporation innovation is that firm can obtain knowledge through outside network. There is positive relationship between network centrality and innovation performance. But the relationship between network density and innovation performance is nonlinear. The high level of network tie strength means firm can realize good management and market innovation performance. The mediating variable, the network topology, can remarkably reduce the level of complexity knowledge. But there is no effect of it to reduce the level of tacitness and ambiguity knowledge.(3) Good absorptive capacity can help firm assimilate more knowledge from outside network, which is very important for innovation. Technique innovation needs more acquisition ability to innovate. But for management and market innovation, the assimilation and exploitation ability are more important.Overall, based on the relevant research, four major progresses are achieved in this study: (1) explaining the explicit relationship between the different properties of knowledge and corporation innovation performance, developping the knowledge manament theory; (2) Using the empirical methods, this research finds that the mediating variable, network topology, can remarkably reduce the level of complexity knowledge; (3) enriching absorptive capacity theory by associating different properties of knowledge and absorptive capacity; (4) developing the model of factors that affect corporation innovation performance.