The Mode, Mechanism And Dynamic Evolvement Of R&D Outsourcing

Outsourcing has been considered as one of the most important methods for enterprises during the last 75 years by Harvard Business Review. With the development of outsourcing, more and more enterprises have partly or totally outsourced their important businesses (such as the new products design and development) to suppliers, which leads to the emergency of R&D outsourcing. R&D outsourcing has merged into the global economic chain as a new technological innovative method and become a popular topic. Therefore, some questions, such as "how to operate R&D outsource?","Will R&D outsource really improve the enterprises' technological innovative capabilities?", have become the most important issues for R&D Managers. Although the existing research has outlined the characteristics and phenomenon of R&D outsourcing, there is a paradox about the mechanism of outsourcing and firm performance,especially the relative empirical studies are even insufficient.In order to integrate enterprises' inside and outside R&D resource, to improve the R&D level and innovative capabilities, and to discuss the mechanism and evolvement of R&D outsourcing, this thesis tries to answer the following research questions: (1) What is R&D outsourcing mode? What is the relationship between R&D outsourcing and firm performce? (2) How to outsource? Will R&D outsourcing impact firm innovation performance? (3) During the development of enterprises, how will the structure and mode evolve?This thesis explores these issues by three sub-researches with combination of theoretical study and empirical study, literature review and investigation, and as well as qualitative research and quantitative research.The first sub-research focuses on the relationship between R&D outsourcing and firm performance. With the investigation on the characteristics of manufacture, medical, software and service industry, this research distinguishes routine and novel R&D outsourcing from the perspectives of outsourcing objectiveness (reduce the cost of commercial business change), outsourcing technology (mature or new technology), outsourcing market (old or new market) and outsourcing innovative level. Based on the 73 enterprises questionnaires, this thesis analyzes the relationship between R&D outsourcing and firm innovation performance by SPSS curve regression.The second sub-research focuses on the R&D outsourcing mechanism. After the theory pre-hypothesis, case selection, data collecting and analysis, six hypotheses are promoted focusing on the mechanism of R&D outsourcing. 206 firms in Zhejiang Province China are investigated via questionnaires. Explorative Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) are conducted to establish and verify the measures. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is applied to testify and modify the concept model. The result shows that R&D outsourcing can promote technological innovation performance through inside and outside coordination capabilities.The third sub-research first divides the development of enterprises into 3 stages: new, developed and mature based on the measurement of Churchill & Lewis (1983). From the comparative study of resource, relationship and knowledge dimension in different stages, we demonstrate the evolvement of R&D outsourcing, which provides the theoretical and practical methods for R&D outsourcing decision.Drawing on the above research, some conclusions can be presented as follows:(1) R&D can be outsourced and its impacts on firm innovation performance are decided by R&D outsourcing mode. The results show that routine R&D outsourcing is positive to firm innovation performance while novel R&D outsourcing is curvalinear to firm innovation performance. Meanwhile, environmental dynamism negtively moderates the relationship between R&D outsourcing and firm innovation performance.(2) R&D outsourcing is the combination of resource, relationship and knowledge. The mechanism of R&D outsourcing is the cooperation of R&D outsourcing dimension and inside/outside coordination capabilities, which improve the firm innovation performance. Routine R&D outsourcing emphasises on the inside coordination capabilities while novel R&D outsourcing emphasises on the outside coordination capabilities.(3) From the new, developed to mature stages, the resource, relationship and knowledge dimension are becoming more and more stronger. Routine R&D outsourcing is becoming less important while novel R&D outsourcing is becoming more important.As a whole, this thesis discusses R&D outsourcing mode and mechanism, which provides the solution to R&D management. All of these make good suggestions and a new research direction for future research. Thus, the main innovative points are followings:(1) Distinguishing between routine and novel R&D outsourcing. It simplifies multi-dimension methods, remedies the "core" single-dimension methods, and settles the paradox relationship between outsourcing and firm performance.(2) Constructing "dimension-cooperative capability-performance" mechanism model, which settles the "mode- performance" black box and provides the advices for outsourcing management.(3) Through the cluster and one-way regression analysis, this thesis discussing the resource, relationship and knowledge differentiations in different phrases of the whole development of enterprises, which provides dynamic selection and decision framework of R&D outsourcing.