Open Innovation In Network

In the twenty-first Century,“innovation”became the theme of this era.How to effectively realize the improvement of innovation capacity and performance has become a topic of common interest both in theory and practice.Along with the further development of information technology and the continuous promotion of social division of labor,organizations are increasingly focused on their core competencies and core technology development,but opening up their boundaries to seamlessly collaborate and exchange knowledge with external stakeholders to leverage complementary assets and capabilities,and to accelerate the commercialization of their innovation outputs,by which Chesbrough(2003)called this kind of practice as“open innovation”in his seminal book on OI.Therefore,in the new market competition environment,“open innovation" has become an inevitable choice for organizations to achieve better performance.From the perspective of theoretical research,the ana]ytical framework of“open innovation" can be able to integrate the existing theories and related researches,such as cooperative R&D,user innovation and network innovation into the same theoretical framework for analysis and discussion,which brings more research opportunities for us.Basically,“open innovation”means that organizations should open up their boundaries to accessing external knowledge for their innovation practices.But how does openness influence firms' ability to innovate and appropriate benefits of innovation?These questions lie at the heart of recent research in this issue.Even if the positive role of“open innovation" has been generally recognized both in theory and in practice,the existing empirical analysis has not yet reached a consistent conclusion.For the reason,we think that the key lies in the comparison of the cost and benefit brought by the acquisition of external knowledge,which leads to the discussion in the“complementary effect" and“substitution effect" of the accessing external knowledge in theprocess of organization innovation.Therefore,in order to gain a deeper understanding of the interrelationship between“open innovation”and organization performance,this study attempts to do further analysis from the level perspective of "open innovation".In this study,we divided the external environment of the organization into two levels:the organization cooperation network environment and the entire external market environment.Among them,the cooperative network between the entire external market environment and the organizational hierarchy,as a special arrangement among organizations,plays an important role in the process of acquiring external knowledge.Therefore,this study attempts to explore the mechanism of implementing“open innovation" in the cooperative network“middle level”,and further deeply exploring the important roles of the tie strength and internal knowledge structure.Specifically,based on the theoretical framework of“open innovation”in the network“middle level",and from the perspective of internal and external knowledge structure matching,we will try to indentify the relationship between network tie strength,external knowledge acquisition and innovation performance.In order to examine the hypothesis,the data analysis software of SPSS 20.0 and AMOS 20.0 was used and the data from 222 IT and manufacturing enterprises was collected.The empirical results based on the hierarchical regression model and path analysis show that:First,cooperative network tie strength enhances the organizational performance through the multiple mediation effect of external knowledge acquisition and innovation,which means that in the cooperative network,the closer the relationship between the firm and its partners,the more favorable it is to obtain extensive or deep external knowledge,which can induce better incremental and radical innovation,and then better strategic performance.Second,based on the transaction cost theory and redundant information,in the cooperative network,internal knowledge structure negatively moderates the positive relationship between external knowledge acquisition and radical innovation.Specifically,according to the redundant information,when the internal structure and external knowledge structure are either breadth or either depth,the positive effect of network external knowledge breadth and depth on radical innovation would be diminished.Meanwhile,due to the lack of absorptive capacity,when the internal and external knowledge structure is inconsistent,the effect of network external knowledge acquisition on radical innovation is also weakened.Further,the results from the moderated mediation test show that,the mediation effect of external knowledge acquisition between network tie strength and radical innovation is not that significant under the cooperative network environment.The results further support the existing conclusion that the homogeneity knowledge in the“strong tie" situation is not conducive to the realization of radical innovation.Third,the empirical results also show that in turbulent technology environment,organization that are pursuing radical innovation are likely to increase their strategic performance,but this effect is not exist to incremental innovation.All in all,the research conclusion of this paper in some extant reflects the existing innovation practice of Chinese enterprises.And our study also highlights various theoretical and managerial implications through providing new insights into in-depth understanding the mechanism of the action in“open innovation".