The Evolution Of R&D Collaborative Networks And Its Impact On Technological Innovation

With the higher speed products renewal and the fiercer market competition, and the wider demand of technology innovation on professional abilities, the structure of the collaborative relationships among organizations within the industry turns into a close network rather than two points, thus a R&D collaboration network has been occurred. For the sake of the cooperation among organizations and the sharing of technology innovation resources, the knowledge have to flow in the R&D collaboration network, and the key point for quick and efficiency knowledge flow is the structure of the whole network. Therefore, studying on the evolution and impact on technology innovation of the R&D collaboration network is a important issue with theoretical and practical significance.Informed research focus on geography constellation effect, network characteristics and influence factors of the R&D collaboration network in terms of qualitative analysis, but lacking of quantitative description on evolution process and empirical research on the impact on technical innovation. This paper makes up for the deficiency, and meanwhile, using the theory and analysis methods of the complex network and the social network to have a deep theoretical analysis on the formation and evolution mechanism of the collaborative R&D network, and quantitatively describes the evolution process of the R&D collaboration network, and using the Agent modeling and simulation method and the econometric model to simulate and empirically test the impact on technical innovation from the evolution of the structure of the R&D collaboration network. The main contents including:(1)The formation and evolution mechanism of the R&D collaboration network. Under the background of open innovation, The R&D edge begins to cross the enterprise, and the acquisition of cooperative surplus makes the collaborative R&D activities possible. First, based on analyzing the micro cooperative mechanism among agents of the R&D collaboration network, this paper discusses the typical characteristics of the R&D collaboration network organizations, including the diversity, cooperativity, dynamics, nonlinearity and embedability. And comparatively analyzes various organization patterns and types of the R&D collaboration network, and concludes the competitive advantages of the R&D collaboration network. Second, this paper analyzes the evolution process of the R&D collaboration network based on the life circle theory, and describes the leading features of the R&D collaboration network at each stage. Third, this paper analyzes the inter-organization learning process based on the Agent modeling and simulation method, and points out that the knowledge transfer will lead to the decrease of knowledge differences of the R&D collaboration network.(2)The impact mechanism of the network characteristics of the R&D collaboration network on technical innovation. As the R&D collaboration network is a very typical complex network, this paper analyzes the small world characteristics, scaleless property, network centrality and network density of the R&D collaboration network. And then analyzes the impact on technical innovation by the network density, network centrality and cluster coefficient of the R&D collaboration network, and then proposes a research hypothesis that the network density and the network centrality and the cluster coefficient respectively have an inverted U-shaped relationship with technical innovation. Meanwhile, considering the knowledge demand for various technical innovation is different, and the comparative analysis between the impacts on radical innovation and incremental innovation by network structure evolution of the R&D collaboration network, this paper proposes two research hypotheses that the network density and the network centrality and the cluster coefficient respectively have an inverted U-shaped relationship with radical innovation, and that the network density and the network centrality and the cluster coefficient respectively have a significant positive relationship with the incremental innovation.(3)The analog simulation based on the agent modeling and simulation method and the establishment of the knowledge increase model of the R&D collaboration network. After the complex adaptability analysis of the R&D collaboration network and the connection between Agent modeling and simulation techniques and the complex adaptability analysis, this paper adopts Agent modeling and simulation techniques to establish the knowledge increase model. And this paper describes the knowledge behaviors of innovation agents within the R&D collaboration network from four aspects, including search rules, diffusion rules, overflow rules and innovation rules, then to establish the knowledge increase model. And then use the Netlogo simulation platform to simulate the knowledge increase under different network structures. And this paper also collects data and uses the regression model to empirically test the relationship between the evolution of the network structure and the knowledge increase. From the perspective of knowledge management, the simulation results show that the network density, centrality and cluster coefficient of the R&D collaboration network have an inverted U-shaped relationship with technical innovation, respectively.(4)Establish the R&D collaboration network by using the data of the automobile industry, in order to have a quantitative description on the evolution process of the R&D collaboration network, and test empirically on the relationship between the evolution of the network structure and technical innovation. After collecting the data of joint patent of the automobile industry, use Ucinet software to establish the R&D collaboration networks from1986to2009, and have a quantitative description on the evolution process of the R&D collaboration network. After collecting the R&D input and output data, this paper uses the co-integration theory to do the empirical test on the research hypotheses that mentioned above, including whether the network density and the network centrality and the cluster coefficient have a relationship with the technical innovation, or with the radical innovation, or with the incremental innovation, and what kind of relationships they are. The empirical results show that the network density, centrality and cluster coefficient of the R&D collaboration network, respectively, have an inverted U-shaped relationship with the radical innovation, meanwhile, the network density has significant positive effect on the incremental innovation.In the end, based on the empirical research conclusions, this paper combines all the researches, and then proposes policy suggestions and management countermeasures to promote the technical innovation from the perspectives of enterprise, industry as well as country.