A Study On The Technology Catching-up Mechanism Of Chinese Firms Grounded In Transitional Economy Context-Open Innovation Theory Perspective

The global economy and the Internet-based information technologies have connected the linking dots between all parts of the world in this context,reshaped the business model of value creation process,and initiated a sharp change in the relationship between enterprises.The technological innovation paradigm has changed from the traditional closed innovation to the highly open innovation in the long run.Now the competitions among the firms are more likely presented in the forms of firms' alliance,and the development trends of among various industries have evolved at the same time.Compared with the firms from developed countries and regions,the firms from the less-developed countries and regions should make the most of entrepreneurial spirits and shifts of technological innovation paradigm to pursuit technical learning in a more effective way,upgrade their technical capacities and boost competitive positions in the international industrial division chains,give full play to the advantages of the late-comers at the same time,overcome the traditional technological progress path dependence problem,and therefore achieve the technology catching-up goals.From the perspective of entrepreneurial spirit and open innovation paradigm,the research on the technology catching-up of the post-development enterprise is a research topic which should be taken as a top priority when it comes to explore the strategic transformation of the enterprise in the global economy context,especially the current transitional economic developmental phrase in China.Through existing researches have investigated the relationships between open innovation and innovation performance,and have reached some general consensus on the entrepreneurial spirit role in the process of creating and maintaining competitive advantages.Existing researches have not paid enough attentions to this,therefore there is still a research gap and this study attempts to fill this research gap using mixed research methods,namely combine qualitative and quantitative research methods to systematically interpret innovation practice of later-comer firms.China is a very important economic entity in the emerging economies,which is also a new economic growth engine at the present stage.The Chinese manufacturing firms,represented by Huawei,Sany Heavy Industry and Geely Automobile,have entered the development track of technological innovation abilities.This study utilizes Chinese 7 manufacturing firms as our sample case firms,we focus our research questions,namely,how entrepreneurial spirits and open innovation influence technology catching-up performance,we propose and systematically investigate the three following questions,(?)Why there is entrepreneurial spirit?What is its role in the technology catching-up process?(?)What are the factors that influence the technology acquisition mode of Chinese firms?How improves innovation performance and achieves technology catching-up through open innovation?(?)How Chinese firms promote technology catching-up strategy successfully and achieve their strategic goals using open innovation?What measures do they take to boost the open innovation strategy?Through the above theoretical analysis and the results of three sub-studies,we have come to the theoretical propositions as follows,Proposition(1):When the late-comer firms are close to the technology forefront,open innovation is an effective way to obtain advanced technology.Through frequent and good interactions with leading enterprises,late-comer firms can improve their understanding of the technical systems,while improve technology learning ability and have technology realization platform provide a strong practical support to implement open innovation strategy.Proposition(2):When the latecomers are close to technology forefront,firms can ensure that the management of the replacement can be entrepreneurial stability and intergenerational heritage through an effective management system.International management experiences and attentions to technological innovations are important criterions in the selection process of potential top management teams.Proposition(3):When the later-comers are close to the technology forefront,based on independent innovation,the collaboration innovation strategy will be more conducive to enhance the technical complexity of enterprises and the depth and width of the patent,through R&D outsourcing the common technology firms can focus on the core areas in R&D investment,to protect leading position in technology.Proposition(4):When it comes to select cross-border mergers and acquisitions and collaboration partners,we should fully take the target enterprise's original organizational processes and values into considerations,reserving differences while seeking common ground,in order to achieve a smooth integration between the organizations and to achieve an all-win result for all players.Proposition(5):When the later-comer firms are close to technology forefront,top management teams should constantly reflect on the patterns of creating value with their stakeholders.With the help of open innovation,it is necessary to give full play to its competitive advantage,achieve the technology self-reliance,get ahold of the platform leadership and the technical saying is the key to the sustainable catching-up for the later-comer firms.Utilizing 259 firms from manufacturing industry,this study has come to some research conclusions as follows,(1)Risk takings,witihin organizational knowledge sharing,market orientation and R&D investments all has positive impact on the firm technology acquisition modes.Open innovation positively moderates the relat:inships.(2)Technology acquisition mode is positively correlated with innovation performance,and the relationship is positively moderated by strategic flexibility.Open innovation is positively correlated with innovation performance.Open innovation plays a partial mediating role in the relationship between technology acquisition mode and innovation performance,and the joint effect of technology acquisition model and strategic flexibility on innovation performance is realized through the complete mediating role of open innovation.Last but by no rmeans the least,in general,this study deepens and extends current researches in the following two aspects:(?)This study sheds light on why entrepreneurial spirits emerge and its positive role in the process of later-comer technology catch-up study systematically based on the above analysis from the mentioned above multiple-case study.(?)This study explores and validates the mechanism of open innovation on the technology acquisition and innovation performance improvement of the late-comer firms.This study finds the boundary condition of the effect of technology acquisition modes on innovation performance,also validates the theoretical validity of open innovation and therefore deepens the theory of open innovation theoretical research grounded in Chinese firms context.