| Since the “Mass Innovation and Entrepreneurship” proposed in 2014,the number of new ventures registered in China has reached new highs,and the index of entrepreneurial activity of China has leaped to the top of the major economies.The entrepreneurial activities of all occupations are in the ascendant and become a new engine for economic and social development.However,up to now,the main innovation indicators of China still lag behind the developed economies,which means the overall innovation quality of China’s entrepreneurial activities still needs to be improved.Consequently,in the fields of key technology,China is facing the “Cut-throat Competition” restriction of developed economies.In order to accelerate the transformation of economic structure and breakthrough the technological blockade,the Chinese government puts more emphasis on innovation and entrepreneurship in high-tech industries.Therefore,technological entrepreneurship has spontaneously become the main force both in industrial restructuring and in the breakthrough technological blockade.At the present stage,the government carried out policy preference,which has created a good atmosphere for the development of technological entrepreneurship.However,it is still an indisputable fact that the death rate of technological entrepreneurship activities is higher than that of other entrepreneurship activities.According to statistics,the average life span of high-tech new ventures in China is less than 4 years.Intelligent hardware,O2 O,and other new business forms are industries with a high rate of mortality.Therefore,a high rate of mortality has become one of the typical characteristics of new firms,especially for technological new ventures.As to the academic fields,the research on technological entrepreneurship is still in its infancy.Although Schumpeterian theory,resource theory,institution theory,and other major theories have their own explanations on the growth mechanism of technological entrepreneurship,however,different studies have come to different,even contradictory,conclusions.Therefore,the growth mechanism for technological new ventures has still lacked clear conclusions,which needs in-depth research.Through a systematic literature review,this dissertation sorted out two main research branches,which explained the growth mechanism for technological new ventures.The first branch is that new ventures could obtain competitive advantage through innovation,and then achieve high growth performance;and the second one is that new ventures could obtain necessary resources by building a solid relationship with their audiences,and then achieve high growth performance.Meanwhile,it should be noted that the two branches of research are not mutually exclusive,but can complement each other.Only when the two branches are combined to form configurations,can the complex entrepreneurial growth performance differences be fully explained.However,the existing studies are lacking systematic discussion in the above aspects.Therefore,this dissertation adopted three sub-studies to resolve the following theoretical questions:(1)Innovation-driven growth mechanism.Could entrepreneurial orientation,as the motivation of enterprise innovation,promote the growth performance by stimulating innovation activities such as new product development? If so,what kind of boundary conditions may affect this process,and what is its mechanism?(2)Resource-driven growth mechanism.Guanxi orientation is the origins to acquire entrepreneurial resources,so could new ventures obtain different types of entrepreneurial resources through Guanxi orientation,and then promotes the growth performance? Moreover,would different types of entrepreneurial resources play different roles in the linkage of “Guanxi orientation-growth performance”,and what kind of role they might play?(3)The configuration mechanisms are composed of innovation drivers and resource drivers.There might be different paths to achieve high growth performance for technological new ventures.Then,could the configuration formed by different drivers achieve the effect of “the same goal in different ways”? If so,which configurations exist?What are the characteristics of these configurations?Based on the theoretical perspectives of entrepreneurial orientation,legitimacy,social capital,Guanxi orientation,and optimal distinctiveness,by using the methods of literature research,questionnaire survey,multiple hierarchical regression analysis,bootstrap method,and fsQCA,this dissertation expounded the above theoretical questions,and drawn the following main conclusions:Firstly,this dissertation explored the mechanism of “innovation motivation-innovation activity-innovation output” linkage,and the moderating role of legitimacy within it.By using the multiple hierarchical regression model and Bootstrap method,this dissertation empirically tested 306 samples of new ventures in Chinese high-tech industries.This dissertation verifies the basic hypothesis that entrepreneurial orientation promotes growth performance.Meanwhile,it expanded the mediating mechanism of new product development in the process of entrepreneurial orientation affecting growth performance.Moreover,based on the two types of legitimacy in the context of Chinese high-tech industry entrepreneurship,namely political legitimacy,and market legitimacy,this dissertation studied the different roles of the two kinds of legitimacy in the innovation-driven process and identified the conditional context of innovation-driven growth mechanism.Secondly,this dissertation explored the mechanism of “Guanxi orientation-resource acquisition-growth performance”.By using the multiple hierarchical regression model and Bootstrap method,this dissertation empirically tested the sample of 319 new ventures from Chinese high-tech industries.The results verified the basic hypothesis that Guanxi orientation promotes growth performance and that Guanxi orientation helps firms to acquire entrepreneurial resources.Furthermore,it expanded the mediating mechanism of two kinds of entrepreneurial resources in the process of Guanxi orientation promoting growth performance.Besides,it identified the chain mediating effect of Guanxi orientation,intangible resource,tangible resource,and growth performance in the context of Chinese high-tech industries,which highlights the different roles of two types of resources.Based on the findings,this dissertation identified a resource-driven growth mechanism.Thirdly,this dissertation identified “innovation” drivers,“conformity” drivers,and technological conditions,which might jointly influence new venture growth performance.Based on the theories,it inferred the configuration composed by different drivers and conditions,which achieve high growth performance.By using the fsQCA method,this dissertation analyzed 201 samples of new ventures from strategic emerging industries in China.Four types of configuration for technological new ventures to achieve high growth performance are identified,which are “innovation-driven”configuration,“resource-driven” configuration,“original technological breakthrough”configuration,and “dual driven” configuration.This dissertation may have the following theoretical contributions:Firstly,the growth mechanism driven by innovation forces is revealed.It verified,enriched,and deepened the research of entrepreneurship orientation on growth performance.On the one hand,this dissertation emphasized the core mediating role of new product development in the process,which revealed the linkage between entrepreneurial orientation and growth performance in the context of technological entrepreneurship.On the other hand,based on the institutional logic of China’s market economy,this dissertation explained the influence of different types of legitimacy,which originated from different institutional logics,on the transformation process of innovation activities transferring into innovation performance.Therefore,it has relieved the current research controversy of how innovation is driven a firm’s growth performance.Secondly,the growth mechanism drove by resource forces is revealed.It verified,enriched,and deepened the research of Guanxi orientation on growth performance.The dissertation emphasized the important role of entrepreneurial resource,and constructs the intermediary process of “Guanxi orientation-resource acquisition-growth performance”,and analyzed the internal mechanism within the process,and proposed two chain mediating paths.This dissertation explained the different roles of intangible resources and tangible resources in the process of Guanxi orientation transferring into growth performance.To a certain extent,it has improved the resource-driven growth mechanism.Finally,the configuration of different mechanisms to achieve high growth performance is revealed.This dissertation creatively integrated the factors of“innovation” and “resource acquisition”,and proposed an intergrated framework to achieve high growth performance.Hence,it highlighted the mechanism of “different paths lead to the same goal”.Based on the theoretical framework,it developed four types of configuration,which basically covers the path to achieve high growth performance for new ventures in Chinese strategic emerging industries.Therefore,this dissertation provided a new theoretical insight to explain the growth mechanisms for technological new ventures. |
