Research On The Influence And Mechanism Of Start-Up Experience On Individual And Firm Innovation

Mass entrepreneurship and innovation is the source of driving China's economic development,and entrepreneurs are undoubtedly one of the most innovative individuals.The entrepreneurs,by creating new companies,developing new products,services or business models,drive industry innovation and the growth of the economy.In recent years,both the number and the scale,startups across the country have been growing rapidly and play a key role in the modern innovation-driven economy.However,entrepreneurs who end up starting a business and re-returning to the labour market are also showing a growing trendDoes start-up experience of this part of the entrepreneur brings unique value?In fact,some scholars began to realize that individual start-up experience may have important value,and has a positive impact on the attitude,thinking mode and behavior of subsequent career.However,the current literature on entrepreneurial groups and their behavior focuses more on the entrepreneurial process and the startups themselves.On the one hand,current researches focus on the key antecedents of starting new business,focusing on what factors increase the possibility of entrepreneurship.On the other hand,scholars focus on the key factors that affect the survival and performance of startups,in order to explore what factors can lead to entrepreneurial success.In addition,although some studies focus on the possible impact of start-up experience,most studies focus more on the impact of start-up experience on individual re-entrepreneurship and startups.Part of the reason is restricted by the availability of career change data of entrepreneurial individual:the flow of entrepreneurs is decentralized,and it is difficult to obtain the relevant information of this group through interviews,questionnaires,open databases and other traditional data collection methods.However,the emergence of online resume big data has brought a good opportunity for our researchBased on the multi-level learning mechanism and theory,this study investigates the mechanism and continuous influence of start-up experience at the individual level and the enterprise level from the perspective of human capital,respectively,in order to reveal the unique value of start-up experience in human capital and innovation.By obtaining the resume data on professional social network platform(i.e.LinkedIn.com),this article constructs a data set that can track the educational background,skills,working experience,etc.related to the individual's career.Then,we match the resume data with other data sets,including the Harvard Patent Inventor Dataset,Chinese Patent Data Proj ect(CPDP),State Intellectual Property Office(SIPO)patent dataset and other relevant data(financial dataset,MD&A)From the individual level:(1)Start-up experience significantly improves the subsequent innovation performance of individuals,and compared with exploitation innovation,start-up experience plays a more obvious role in promoting individual exploratory innovation.Moreover,one's education level and the extent of collaboration in innovation are found to have a positive moderating effect on the relationship between start-up experience and individual innovation Start-up experience promotes individuals to be in a good position in subsequent R&D networks,and centrality and structural holes of the R&D networks significantly improve individual innovation performance.At the same time,the influence of centrality on exploitation innovation is greater than exploratory innovation,while the influence of structure holes on exploratory innovation is greater than exploitation innovation.(3)Start-up experience significantly improves the possibility of promotion and reduces the average time spent on promotion.From the indirect effect test,individual exploratory innovation performance has an intermediate effect between start-up experience and promotion,but exploitation innovation has no significant effect on promotionFrom the enterprise level:(1)Hiring employees with start-up experience improves the"quality" and "quantity" of firm innovation at the same time,and play a more obvious role in improving the "quality" of innovation.The path dependence orientation negatively moderates the relationship between the hiring employees with start-up experience and the innovation performance,and the educational level plays a positive role.(2)Hiring employees with start-up experience also broadens the social relationship network capital of enterprises,which is beneficial to the improvement of innovation performance.(3)Hiring employees with start-up experience is conducive to the implementation of the enterprise differentiation strategy,and the differentiation strategy significantly improves the innovation performance of the two types of enterprises.Compared with the improvement of the "quantity" of innovation,the differentiation strategy plays a more obvious role in improving the "quality" of innovationThe research perfects and enriches the understanding of the intrinsic value of start-up experience in the field of entrepreneurial research.Specifically,on the one hand,the current literature on the characteristics and behavior of entrepreneurs focuses on the entrepreneurial process and the start-up enterprise itself,ignoring the impact of start-up experience on the subsequent career of entrepreneurs.Based on the mechanism of learning by doing,this paper discusses the influence of start-up experience on innovation performance,social network capital and job promotion by using entrepreneurial resume data.On the other hand,some studies have shown that hiring new employees can improve firm innovation performance.However,there is still a lack of research to further investigate the key problems faced by enterprises in employment,such as who to employ and what mechanism affects the innovation performance of enterprises.Based on the mechanism of learning by hiring,this paper explores how the start-up experience affects the multi-dimensional human capital level of employers and enterprises,and further explores the intrinsic value and influence of start-up experience.In addition,the research also contributes to the existing research from the perspective of social relationship network and firm differentiation competition strategyThis article also provides useful enlightenment and scientific basis for personal entrepreneurship,enterprise employment and government decision-making:(1)Provide a reference for personal start-up selection and career planning:through the use of multi-data sources such as online resume big data,this paper reveals the mechanism and the continuous influence of the individual's start-up experience on the innovation ability of individual human capital.This will help individuals to make an in-depth understanding of the value of the start-up experience while properly assessing the risk of the venture,providing a reference and basis for the individual to make a reasonable start-up selection and career planning.Provide advice and basis for the employment decision-making of the enterprise:through in-depth understanding of the effect and mechanism of the learning by hiring and the start-up experience on the innovation performance of the enterprise,the enterprise management can focus on the individual of the employees who have the start-up experience,and the reasonably adjustment the employment strategy.(3)Provide a new basis for government to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship.Specifically,although the low probability of the success of the start-up has limited the direct benefit brought by the start-up group,start-up experience can objectively improve the human capital and the innovation potential of the entrepreneurs and the follow-up enterprises.That is,start-up experience optimizes human capital and provides help for innovation and economic growth.The relevant conclusions provide an empirical basis and a new thought for the current government to encourage the development and evaluation of entrepreneurship policy.