Research On The Relationship Between Innovation Team Network Characteristics, Knowledge Search And Exploratory Innovation Performance

Under the background of innovation-driven strategy and “Made in China 2025”,“innovation” has been written into Chinese enterprises' gene.With the emergence of emerging technologies,consumer types and consumer preferences have changed rapidly,and the cycle of change in technology and market has also been significantly shortened and increased.This requires that Chinese enterprises or teams have a high level of exploratory innovation.The evolution of knowledge is continually systematized,and knowledge resources are diversified and decentralized.Chinese enterprises need not only to rely on endogenous accumulation to carry out exploratory innovation,but also to buy patents,technologies and processes to supply the resources needed for innovation.This also puts higher demands on knowledge search management.Exploratory innovation is a creation activity which based on new knowledge and new technology,and it requires systematic and in-depth organizational structure with management procedures.Nowadays,some studies have pointed out that innovation should not be limited to the explorative innovative innovation,it is necessary to jump out of the innovative ambidexterity entanglement,and face the challenge of exploratory innovation.Recently,exploratory innovation and its antecedent variables have become a hot topic.The relationship between innovation team network characteristics,knowledge search and exploratory innovation is still in inconclusive.It is necessary to explore the specific impact mechanism of innovation team network characteristics.The specific influence mechanism of characteristics on external knowledge search;the influence of external knowledge search and its effect on exploratory innovation needs to be further studied.The factors of situational variables and their specific effects need to be carefully analyzed.In order to adapt to the increasing needs which consists of sensitive dynamic technology and market environment,the innovation team should accurately grasp the overall trend of enterprise innovation,lead the development of the enterprise,have the strategic significance of innovation and become the core unit of enterprise innovation.With innovation activities embedded in social network,innovation behavior can be understood correctly only from the perspective of innovation team social network.In the turbulent environment of rapid development and transformation of technology,the network characteristics of the innovation team greatly influence the innovation behavior,which will help the team to effectively acquire and apply external knowledge and information resources.Efficient,accurate and agile use of the network to conduct effective external knowledge search,as well as master the characteristics of ambidexterity of knowledge search,influence or improve the performance of exploratory innovation is a valuable open research proposition.The study integrates the innovation team and its social network characteristics as an antecedent variable of knowledge search,knowledge search as an antecedent variable of exploratory innovation performance.It focuses on “how can enterprise innovation teams make use of social network relations and external knowledge resources to carry out exploratory innovation more efficiently?” This problem introduced behavioral integration to construct new vision for the study of holistic relations conceptual model,and the research literature on related fields such as context variables(technical opportunities,redundant resources)and other systematic research.Summarizing the overall theoretical model and proposing research hypotheses,a holistic model,consists of two relationship parts and can be divided into three sub-studies: sub-study 1 discusses the network characteristics of innovation teams,behavioral integration and the influence mechanism of external knowledge search;sub-study 2 analyzes the influence relationship between external knowledge search and exploratory innovation performance;sub-study 3 explores the effect path of external knowledge search duality and exploratory innovation performance under the adjustment of context variables.The study through the questionnaire survey to get 367 valid samples.Finally,the results show that the network characteristics of innovation teams have a positive impact on external knowledge search(depth and breadth)through behavior integration,and behavior integration plays a partial intermediary role.External knowledge search promotes exploratory innovation performance;The ambidexterity equilibrium dimension of knowledge search has an inverted U-shaped effect on exploratory innovation performance,while the joint dimension is a linear positive influence.The context variables(technical opportunities,redundant resources)positively regulate this effect.The study has the following main conclusions:1.The innovation team network characteristics can help improve the level of external knowledge search,but the behavioral integration plays different mediating roles.The external network centrality,external network sparsity and internal network heterogeneity of the innovation team have positive effects on deep knowledge search and breadth knowledge search.The central-innovation team is able to obtain the “information potential energy” and “control potential energy” from the network.They can have access to high-quality information and multiple knowledge sources,and then they can convert this “potential energy” to dig deeper in a certain field and enrich external knowledge sources.In a low-density network full of complex structures,innovation teams can reduce redundant relationships and maintain weak relationships with a large number of network participants,which can not only deepen the hierarchical depth of relationships among network participants,but also strengthen the number of relationships,thus facilitating the depth and breadth of external knowledge search.At the same time,innovation team network centrality and sparseness can't promote external knowledge search without mutual cooperation within the team,in which behavioral integration plays a partial intermediary role.Innovation the diversity of team members is helpful to broaden the scope of knowledge,improve the cognitive level.Although only team members are mutual cooperation,sharing information,and making decisions together,that can take advantage of the overall strength,raise the breadth and depth external knowledge search,behavior integration in the innovation team in external knowledge search to explore the relationship between the internal network heterogeneity has played a role completely.2.The breadth external knowledge search and depth external knowledge search can positively affect the performance of exploratory innovation.Exploratory innovation performance relies on external knowledge of a certain depth and breadth as the source.Abundant external knowledge sources can avoid negative effects that cannot be found by many unfamiliar contents,improve the possibility of discovering and utilizing new knowledge,expand the diversity of knowledge,reproduce and recombine different knowledge to produce new technologies and processes,and quickly adapt to new market or customer demands.We need to do is to focus on digging for specific areas of knowledge,improve the understanding of the field depth,can improve the level of use,at the same time,it can reduce the risk of using the wrong knowledge,improve the efficiency of finding more valuable knowledge.In turn,accelerate the output and success rate of new technologies,new patents and new products,and promote incentives for exploratory innovation.3.The different dimensions of knowledge search have different effects on exploratory innovation performance.The balanced dimension of the ambidexterity of knowledge search has an inverted U-shaped effect on the performance of exploratory innovation.Situational variables(technical opportunities,slack resources)play a positive role in regulation.In other words,the balance dimension of knowledge search ambidexterity is not always favorable to exploratory innovation.There is an inverted u-shape effect.Before the peak of the inverted u-shape influence curve comes,abundant technical opportunities or abundant slack resources promote the positive effect.After passing the highest point,the negative effect was alleviated.It is not wise to maintain the absolute balance of the depth and breadth of knowledge search and put forward the relative balance view.For the ambidexterity dimension of knowledge search,more is better,which has a positive effect on the performance of exploratory innovation,while more technological opportunities or abundant slack resources have adjusted this effect relationship.4.The study focuses on the enterprise innovation team,proposes and analyzes the conceptual model of the overall relationship "innovation team network characteristics-knowledge search-exploratory innovation performance",understands the overall relationship and improves the previous research perspective.In other words,the study incorporates innovation team theory,social network theory,knowledge-base view,and exploratory innovation theory into a unified analysis framework.At the same time,"social network characteristics influence external knowledge search","independent perspective and ambidexterity perspective: external knowledge search and its ambidexterity effect influences exploratory innovation",the relationships are systematically studied.The study opens up new ideas for understanding innovation team innovation and integrating and enhancing the team's exploratory innovation capability.It also provides abundant theoretic support and meaningful management inspiration for innovation team in the practice of innovation management.