Research On Entrepreneurial Network,New Venture Strategy And Competitive Advantage

China is being critical period of transition,and innovation-driven development is is an important driving force for economic transition.Ventures are important innovation subjects,and they play a key role in innovation-driven development process.In particular,as more and more new ventures are established,which promote the marketization of innovation products.Hence,new ventures are becoming an important force in innovation-driven development.National level and local governments continue to formulate and improve relevant policies and institutions to encourage and support entrepreneurial activities.In recent years,China's entrepreneurial activities have achieved gratifying results.As the "Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2016/2017 China Report" pointed out,China's entrepreneurial activity index is higher than developed countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom.However,the high mortality rate of new ventures is becoming a serious problem to be unresolved.According to data reported by the US "Fortune" magazine,the average life expectancy of Chinese SMEs is only 2.5 years.Our observations have found that most new ventures die in short time,but some new ventures can achieve better performance than others,and even grow into industry "benchmarks".However,why does this phenomenon occur?As every knows,the creation and growth of a new venture is a process to continuously integrate resource to develop opportunities.Hence,the acquisition of entrepreneurial resources is the key factor to determine whether a new venture can grow successfully.There are two means to acquire resource: internal accumulation and external acquisition.As being limited by the liabilities of newness,new ventures cannot acquire resources through internal accumulation.As the economic and social developments of China has entered a stage which means that from rapid growth to high quality,and material needs of consumers have also changed.At the same time,the reform of rules is entering a critical period.These changes means that new ventures will face challenges which being caused by the market demand,technological development and legal and regulatory environment changes.Hence,the characteristics of external environment are ambiguity and unpredictability.Using network relationships is the main way for new ventures to obtain resources under the current environment.Entrepreneurship networks have become the key means for new ventures to solve resource problems.Entrepreneurial networks have become a key perspective to research the creation and growth of new ventures.And explain the mechanisms that new ventures use entrepreneurial networks to achieve competitive advantage is become a hot topic and important direction in entrepreneurship research.This paper integrates entrepreneurial network theory,resource dependence theory,strategic choice theory to establish a research framework to explain the relationship among entrepreneurial networks(business ties and political ties),new venture strategies(exploratory strategy and exploitative strategy)and competitive advantage.And we take competitive intensity and entrepreneurial learning ability into the framework which represents the external environment and internal ability.Using this research framework,our purpose is to reveal the mechanism of entrepreneurial network.In short,we reveal the intermediate path of entrepreneurial network influencing competitive advantage through new venture strategy,and the moderating effects of competitive intensity and entrepreneurial learning ability on the relationship between entrepreneurial network and new venture strategy.During the research process,we selected five new ventures to conduct case analysis to verify the validity and practical value of the theoretical model.On the basis of case analysis,in order to prove the universality of the research model,this research uses questionnaire to collect data from 478 new ventures.Using the statistical analysis software SPSS analyzes data.We conduct the reliability and validity analysis,correlation analysis and regression analysis,and the results show that most of the hypotheses in our research have been verified by data,and a smallnumber of hypotheses are not supported by data.This shows that the theoretical model of this research has universality.This paper takes entrepreneurial networks as the key perspective,and sorts out relevant literatures to find out the shortcomings.Based on this,we draw on entrepreneurial network theory,resource dependence theory,strategic choice theory,and use case analysis and large sample empirical methods to verify the theoretical model.In this paper,we analyze the composition of entrepreneurial networks from the perspective of business ties and political ties based on the characteristics of Chinese context.And we take new venture strategies(exploratory strategy and exploitative strategy)into account as the mediating variable.We combine the characteristics of the external environment and the internal capabilities of new ventures to analyze the moderating effect of competition intensity and entrepreneurial learning ability.This paper not only complements and improves the existing entrepreneurial theory,but also has guiding value for the decision-making in the practice of new venture entrepreneurship activities.Therefore,this research has some innovation as the following three aspects.(1)Combined with the characteristics of Chinese context,this paper analyzes the matching relationship between entrepreneurial network and new venture strategy from the perspective of network,and reveals the important path of new ventures to gain competitive advantage by using entrepreneurial networks under Chinese context.The research makes up for the shortages of relevant literatures on entrepreneurial network,and provides theoretical support for in-depth understanding of the importance of entrepreneurial network in the growth of new ventures.(2)Based on the shortage of resources of new ventures,this paper analyzes the new venture strategy from the perspective of exploratory strategy and exploitative strategy,and explores the internal mechanism of new ventures to achieve competitive advantage through strategy.It provides a theoretical basis for scholars to study whether there are strategies for new ventures and whether the strategies are different from mature ventures or large ventures.It provides supplement to existing strategy research.(3)The effect of entrepreneurial network is influenced by contingency factors.Hence,this paper take into competition intensity as external factors and entrepreneurial learning ability as internal factors to analyze the moderating effects of eentrepreneurial network.The research makes up for the shortages of existing researches on the moderating effects of entrepreneurial networks,and provides theoretical support for using entrepreneurial network.In short,this research finds that entrepreneurial networks are the key means for new ventures to gain competitive advantages,and new ventures should make full use of different network ties to participate in market competition activities based on their own characteristics.And we must know that the appropriate use of network ties is the key means to solve resource problems to gain competitive advantages.More importantly,this research investigates the role mechanism of entrepreneurial networks based on new ventures under Chinese context.As the existence of the liabilities of newness,new ventures often cannot rely on internal accumulation to solve the resource problemes.Hence,Using network ties to obtain resources from outside is the key means for new ventures.For new ventures,they need to choose a suitable network tie to gain the resource to implement strategy under the changing environment.Existing researches have verified the importance of entrepreneurial networks,however,they have not clearly discovered the role mechanism of entrepreneurial networks in the growth process of new ventures,which implies that the position of entrepreneurial networks is not as expected in new ventures.Therefore,this research paid attention on the role mechanism of entrepreneurial networks provides "hope" for new ventures to better achieve their survival and growth goals,and provides theoretical support and practical guidance for new ventures to deal with high mortality rates.