The Relation Between Collaborative Innovation Networks And Enterprise Growth Under Allocation Of Resources

In an era of globe economic integration,the enterprises are facing great challenges in terms of their innovative ability with the forms of knowledge and technological innovation being upgraded constantly.The enterprises and other innovation subjects have jointly established a stable network relationship to in response to environmental changes and competitions for the sake of minimizing the trade risks and saving running cost,where collaborative innovation networks featuring cross-organization and multi-agent collaboration is taking place of the traditional innovation patterns.Enterprises fully avail of the external knowledge in the environment of collaborative innovation networks to increase the controllability of the research and development and realize complementary advantages of resources,thus improving innovative performance.Although the collaborative innovation networks can help enterprises improve their innovation ability and secure new achievements,it was reported in studies that the collaborative innovation often ended up in failures.The main reason is that the existing management theories and traditional resource-based theories are unable to explain efficiently how the enterprises keep sustainable growth with limited resources.As a result,it's a biased opinion to make a judgement on the developing trend in the future with resources endowment.To a considerable extent,it ignored the initiatives and managing wisdom of the enterprises and their managing staff.The enterprises in the process of constant development demand the changing resources.As the innovative environment changing constantly,enterprises will make adjustments on their strategic goals.Therefore,enterprises should adopt suitable and timely measures to optimize the internal and external distribution of resources in collaborative innovation in light of their developing process,instead of clinging to the understanding of static resources,which has become the main concerned problems among managing staff.Based on the researching problems arising from the reality and theories,this paper summarized the researching significance and purposes,and designed the technical routes.After reviewing the theoretical researching papers relevant to collaborative innovation,resource base and enterprise growth,it put forward the hypotheses on the direct effect,mesomeric effect and moderating effect of collaborative innovation networks in influencing the mechanism of action in enterprise innovation,with a exploratory study of two cases of BOE Technology Group Co.,Ltd.and Dongfang Steam Turbine Co.,Ltd..This paper constructed its theoretical model surrounding the following questions.(1)What kind of role the distribution of resources is playing in the process of collaborative innovation?(2)How did the influencing trend of collaborative innovation change in the process of enterprise growth?(3)Did the collaborative innovation networks show any differences in its influence on different stages of enterprises development and whether there are rules to follow?With the research design and theoretical model,this paper has standardized the research variables,designed the scale,conducted interviews with enterprises and distributed questionnaires.A total of 499 questionnaires were available through preliminary surveys and formal surveys.It has carried out exploratory factor analysis and scale reliability analysis with SPSS.After confirming the reliability of the data,it tested the direct effect of the independent and dependent variables,the mesomeric effect of the intermediary variables and the moderating effect of the moderators in an empirical analysis with regressive model.The conclusions have been drawn as following.(1)The essence of collaborative innovation networks is an effective channel to acquire resources.The empirical results show that three types of collaborative innovation networks –“enterpriseenterprise”,“enterprise-government” and “industry-university-research”-are helpful to improve the enterprise innovation performance.(2)The significant roadmap for collaborative innovation networks to boost innovation in enterprises is the distribution of resources.It is found in this paper that collaborative innovation networks play a significant intermediary role in the mechanism of improving enterprise innovation performance through the structural equation method for data modeling.The allocation of resources plays a full intermediary role in the impact of the three types of collaborative innovation networks mentioned above on enterprise innovation performance.(3)The enterprise growth cycle plays an important role as a moderator in the acting mechanism of collaborative innovation networks on enterprise innovation performance.The empirical results from reliability and validity test,correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis show that,the enterprise growth cycle has an obvious negative moderating effect on the relationship between the three types of collaborative innovation networks and enterprise innovation performance.Meanwhile,the three types of collaborative innovation networks have impacts of different extent on the starting,growing and mature stage of enterprises due to different resources in different growing stages of enterprises and there is some regularity.(4)There is a virtuous circle between enterprise growth and collaborative innovation networks.In the development,the enterprises will accumulate resources and improve its innovative ability continuously for the alterations of collaborative innovation partners in sustainable innovative activities,which could result in the accompanying evolution of the structures of collaborative innovation networks.One the other hand,the collaborative innovation networks can improve enterprise innovation performance significantly through distribution of resources to accelerate the enterprise growth.There is a virtuous circle where they can improve and influence each other.This paper analyzed systematically and studied empirically the acting mechanism of collaborative innovation networks on enterprise innovation,in which it expounded the relation between collaborative innovation and enterprise growth.It has made theoretical contribution in terms of the following four aspects.(1)It has analyzed the connotation of collaborative innovation networks,and explored the acting mechanism of different types of collaborative innovation networks on enterprise innovation performance by introducing the distribution of resources as a mediator variable.The results emphasized the importance of the flexible distribution and the coordinated utilization of relations,resources,skills and innovative activities among subjects.(2)It has explored the moderating effect of enterprise growth cycle on the acting mechanism of collaborative innovation networks,and broadened the researching vision on collaborative innovation networks under the allocation of resources,in which it has optimized and replenished the management research system.(3)It has explored the differences in the role of collaborative innovation networks in different stages of enterprise growth,and widened the influencing mechanism of enterprise growth cycle on collaborative innovation networks.When an enterprise keeps growing from a start-up,its resources will be changing constantly,so the strategic goals of the enterprise will also change.This opinion will broaden the researching vision on collaborative innovation networks and enterprise innovation.Because the development of the enterprise is dynamic rather than static and unchanged,the research of enterprise innovation must respond to the enterprise growth.(4)It has explored the relationship between collaborative innovation networks and enterprise growth.The researching result has deepened the studies in terms of the collaborative innovation theory and enterprise growth theory,proving that there is a virtuous circle between collaborative innovation networks and enterprise growth.It can provide new managing mind and practical guidance for enterprises to manage collaborative innovation networks with a science-based method.