Research On The Impact Of Innovation Network Embeddedness On Firms' Innovation Performance In The Context Of Digital Economy

Innovation is the theme of modern economic and social development,and enterprise innovation is a key component of building an innovative country.Since the 18th CPC National Congress,the Chinese government has attached great importance to the development of digital economy.With the rise of digital technology,many new business models,new modes and new technologies have emerged,and the pace of enterprise innovation has also been accelerating.Facing the rapidly changing competitive environment in the digital economy,it has become a thing of the past for enterprises to rely on solitary efforts to occupy the market.Nowadays,enterprises should actively embed themselves in innovation networks,maximize access to external resources through organizational cooperation,and realize the absorption of resources and technologies.At present,scholars have not yet reached a unified conclusion on the relationship between innovation network embedding and innovation performance.The reasons for this situation may be twofold:one is the neglect of the impact of external contextual changes,and the other is that the measurement of firms'innovation performance is not comprehensive.In addition,open innovation brings rich and diverse resources and knowledge to enterprises,but if the internal capabilities of enterprises are not sufficient,it will make it difficult to use these resources and knowledge efficiently and reduce the efficiency of enterprise innovation.In the digital economy,it is also necessary to further explore whether firms can "harness" external resources and knowledge with digital technology to promote their innovation performance,and it is also questionable whether the degree of embeddedness of firms'innovation networks has the same effect on innovation quality as innovation quantity.In view of this,this paper attempts to address three questions based on the digital economy context:first,how the degree of embeddedness in innovation networks affects innovation performance(quantitative and qualitative performance),second,how the degree of openness affects innovation performance(quantitative and qualitative performance),and third,how the internal digital capabilities,external environment(the level of big data development in the region and the degree of intellectual property protection)influence the relationship between the degree of open innovation and the innovation performance of the firm.Based on social network theory,resource-based theory and dynamic capability theory,this paper applies literature analysis and empirical analysis to construct a conceptual model from the embedding characteristics of enterprises in innovation networks,and investigates the mechanisms of the embedding mechanisms,decision-making behaviors and final effects of enterprise innovation networks,and explores how the differences in the embedding characteristics of enterprises' networks affect enterprises' decisions on the degree of openness to innovation,which in turn has an impact on enterprise The model investigates how the differences in network embedding characteristics of enterprises affect the enterprises' decision on the degree of innovation openness and thus on their innovation performance.It also integrates the internal digital capabilities of firms and the external environmental characteristics of firms(the level of big data development and the degree of intellectual property protection),and investigates how these two aspects moderate the relationship between different degrees of open innovation on innovation performance.This paper attempts to demonstrate that differences in network embeddedness,especially in the location of firms' embedded networks,result in differences in firms' open innovation roles and,ultimately,in their innovation performance.This paper takes A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen in China as the research object,and after data screening,finally identifies 344 listed companies,which constitute the innovation network,and applies the social network analysis software UCINET to measure the degree of embeddedness of the innovation network;then establishes the econometric model,and applies STATA software to test the conceptual model and Finally,based on the regression results,we discuss and summarize the results,draw the corresponding management inspirations,and present the innovation points and shortcomings of this paper and the future research outlook.This study concludes the following:firstly,in the digital economy,innovation network structure embedding has a significant positive effect on both innovation quantity and innovation quality,while relationship embedding has a significant U-shaped effect on innovation quantity only;secondly,in the digital economy,there is a significant positive effect between openness breadth and innovation quantity performance and innovation quality performance,while openness depth has a significant positive effect on both innovation quantity and innovation quality.In addition,in the digital economy,innovation network structure embedding has an inverted U-shaped influence on openness breadth(but not openness depth),and relationship embedding has a U-shaped curvilinear influence on both openness breadth and openness depth;finally,digital capability of enterprises positively regulates the relationship between openness breadth and innovation quality performance(but not innovation quantity).Finally,the digital capability of enterprises positively regulates the promotion effect between the breadth of openness and innovation quality performance(but not innovation quantity),and the level of big data development and intellectual property protection in the enterprise's region positively regulates the promotion effect of the breadth of openness on innovation quantity(but not innovation quality),and negatively regulates the promotion effect of the depth of openness on innovation performance.The innovation points of this paper are mainly reflected in three aspects:firstly,while exploring the relationship between innovation network embeddedness and the number of innovation patent applications,the impact of innovation network embeddedness on the innovation quality of enterprises is explored;secondly,the internal mechanism of the impact of enterprise network embeddedness on innovation performance is revealed with innovation openness as a mediating variable;thirdly,in the context of digital economy,the digital capability of enterprises and the external environment(big data development)of enterprises are explored.Third,the weighting role of the external environment(the level of big data development and the degree of intellectual property protection)in the relationship between the degree of open innovation and innovation performance of enterprises is explored in the context of the digital economy.The weaknesses and prospects for future research include:whether the interaction between different embedding indicators of innovation networks affects the innovation performance of enterprises needs to be further investigated;whether there differences in the mechanisms between the embedding of innovation networks and the innovation performance of enterprises in different industries needs to be further explored;future research can introduce other methods to measure the innovation performance of enterprises,such as R?D investment and new product sales performance,by expanding the database.Future research may introduce other ways to measure enterprise innovation performance,such as R?D investment and new product sales performance,by expanding the database.