Mechanism Study On Creating And Appropriating Value In Cooperative Innovation

More and more companies tend to be engaged in cooperative innovation tocounteract or eliminate the uncertainty and complexity of technologicaldevelopment, considering the fact that it is common for curtailment of technologylife cycle and for the drastic rise of risks and costs of R&D. Cooperative innovation,is an act of associated innovation among enterprises, research institutions anduniversities by devoting respective superiority resources for a common goal.However, from the reality of our situation, although technical prospects of somecooperation projects are very good, the enthusiasm of all cooperators are also veryhigh, they often suffer a wide range of issues in the process of cooperation, and mostinnovative projects are ended in failure. Innovation benefit sharing is the core issuein inter-organizational cooperation, which directly affects the long-term stability ofinter-organizational cooperation innovation cooperation and innovation. Currently,benefit sharing way is unreasonable in our inter-organizational cooperation, there area variety of contradictions in innovation benefit-sharing, which directly impacts onthe enthusiasm of the cooperation of all parties, and it will restrict the developmentof cooperation and innovation. It is critical to establish an effective and reasonablecooperation innovative mechanism for benefit sharing to promote the developmentof our innovation cooperation.Therefore, this paper puts forward hypothesis as well as a conceptual model ofthe influence of RSI on value creation and value appropriation in cooperativeinnovation, with reference to resource-based view, transaction cost theory, equitytheory and risk-revenue theory. In order to explore the interactional mechanismamong relationship-specific investment, value creation and value appropriation, weexamine hypothesis through questionnaire and structural equation model (SEM) analysis on187high-tech enterprises in Northeast China. This paper investigates therole of RSI playing in cooperative innovation, by probing the links between RSI andinnovation performance, and unveiling the key force of value appropriation to giveimplications and advice for cooperative innovation participants.Relationship-specific investment (RSI) is special-purposed asset for a specificcooperative project, however, when the relationship terminated, the value of the assetwould drastically diminish or even disappear. RSI made by cooperator is essential fora successful cooperative innovation project. Value creation in cooperative innovationentails the total value created in a collaborative effort among cooperative partners,such as research institutions, universities, and especially enterprises. Valueappropriation in cooperative innovation depicts the value that a focal firm claimssuccessfully from the projects. From a conceptual perspective, value creation andvalue appropriation represent two sides of a coin. Value creation entails the total valuecreated in a collaborative effort among innovation partners. Value appropriationdepicts the value that a focal partner claims successfully. Value creation is aprerequisite for appropriation, and value creation enhances relationship partners’ valueappropriation.To probe the mechanism of innovative value creation and appropriation in inter-organizational cooperation, this paper also introduces other variables, such asknowledge sharing, coordination effectiveness, investor contribution, investor risk andinvestor dependence. Knowledge sharing refers to two partners effectively exchangethe critical task information, know-how and other issues during the new productsdevelopment process in cooperative innovation. Coordination effectiveness is theextent which two partners effectively work together in order to accomplish acollective set of tasks during the cooperative innovation process. Investor contributionrefers to the extent that investment side contributes to the project, and it depends onthe asymmetric resource devoted. Investor risk refers to the extent that investmentside suffers from the project while failed, the amount of risk depends on theprobability and significance of the loss. Investor dependence refers to the extent thatinvestment side needs to keep the relationship with the receiver. Firstly, this paper puts forward hypothesis as well as a conceptual model of theinfluence of RSI on value creation and value appropriation in cooperative innovationon the basis of defining all the variables. Secondly, we design scale andquestionnaire to measure the above variables, combining with mature metrics.Thirdly, we analyze the data by use of SPSS19.0and LISREL8.70, and discuss thetest results. The empirical results show that9of the10hypotheses have passed,while1has not.The conclusions of this paper shows that relationship-specific investment willpromote cooperative innovation performance through knowledge sharing betweencooperators to forge an advantage of coordination effectiveness; relationship-specific investment has a positive effect on value appropriation mediated byinvestor’s contribution and risk in cooperative innovation; it is not significant fornegative effect that investor’s dependence is to value appropriation in cooperativeinnovation, and relationship-specific investment doesn’t have a negative effect in theprocess of cooperative innovation in China; furthermore value creation has apositive impact on value appropriation in cooperative innovation, relationship-specific investment will enhance the amount of value appropriation throughperformance-promotion effect in cooperative innovation. The conclusions are ofgreat significance for the development of cooperative innovation in China.This study contributes to a better understanding of the role of RSI playing incooperative innovation relationship.First, this study disentangles the internal mechanism of RSI creating valuebased on the analytical framework of “strategic resources�'strategic action�'competitive advantage�'performance”, and inspects the hypothesized modelrelationships by means of structural equation modeling methodology. This researchpartially remedies some flaws of this field, e.g. theoretical research is superficial andempirical study is insufficient.Second, this study first introduces investor contribution, risk and dependence asmediators to analyze the effect of RSI on value appropriation to probe majorinfluencing factors of value appropriation. As a discovery, there exits some differences in innovation value appropriation between China and the West, which ishelp to conduct an exhaustive comparative study on cooperation innovation againstdiscrepant cultural background between the East and the West.Third, we put RSI, value creation and value appropriation into a uniformconceptual model to probe interrelation among three of them for the first time, whichbreaks the new ground in this research field.