Research On The Impact Of New Ventures’ External Knowledge Search On Product Innovation

Innovation is the source of power for social and economic growth and an important strategy for China’s future development.However,as technology becomes more and more complex,R&D costs continue to rise,and product life cycles continue to shorten,traditional closed innovation can no longer meet the knowledge needs of these entrepreneurial companies.Therefore,since the open innovation theory was put forward,more and more scholars at home and abroad have devoted themselves to the research in related fields,and the external knowledge search of enterprises as an important content of the open innovation theory has also received widespread attention.In addition,new ventures are an important part of social and economic development in China,but their survival and development are seriously threatened in today’s changing market environment.Based on the above background,this article is based on open innovation theory,knowledge management theory,and organizational strategy theory,putting forward the main logic frame of the impact of external knowledge search in new ventures on product innovation.The study aims to answer the following questions: First,in an open innovation environment,what kind of knowledge and search methods new ventures need to search for;second,how does the external knowledge search for new entrepreneurs affect product innovation;third,the organizational learning of new ventures What is the mechanism,and whether it can play an intermediary role between external knowledge search and enterprise product innovation;Fourth,when the strategic flexibility of a new venture changes,does it affect the relationship between external knowledge search and product innovation;fifth,whether knowledge search,organizational learning,and strategic flexibility are necessary conditions to promote product innovation and constitute high products What are the configuration paths for innovation and low product innovation?In order to solve the research problems above,this paper mainly expounds the following aspects: First,this paper introduces the theoretical and practical background and significance of this study,the main content,research methods and technical routes,and summarizes the overall framework.Then,this paper introduces the open innovation theory,knowledge management theory and dynamic capability theory,and summarizes the relevant research reviews of enterprise external knowledge search,organizational learning,strategic flexibility and so on,which provides a theoretical and literature basis for subsequent research.Secondly,through combing the relevant literature and combining with practice,this paper constructs the model framework of this study.In this study,the dimension of knowledge search is divided into search content and search method.The search content is divided into technical knowledge search and market knowledge search,and the search method is divided into formal search and informal search.At the same time,the relationship model of external knowledge search,organizational learning and product innovation is constructed.Strategic flexibility is included in the model as a regulatory variable,and relevant research hypotheses are put forward.Thirdly,this paper introduces the source of the scale of each variable,the production of the questionnaire and the basic situation of the collected data,and conducts a small sample test,and conducts a reliability and exploratory factor analysis on the research samples.Finally,this paper verifies the research hypothesis by multiple linear regression method,complements the empirical research by fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis method,and obtains a series of research conclusions.Through the above research and analysis,this article mainly draws the following research conclusions: First,there is a significant positive correlation between the four dimensions of corporate external knowledge search and product innovation,and the role of formal technical knowledge search is the most obvious;Second,there is a significant positive correlation between organizational learning and product innovation;Third,organizational learning plays a full intermediary role between informal search for market knowledge and product innovation,and a partial intermediary role between informal search for technical knowledge and formal search for market knowledge and product innovation;Fourth,strategic flexibility plays a positive role in regulating the relationship between informal search for technical knowledge,informal search for market knowledge,and product innovation;Fifth,there are two configuration paths in high-product innovation,namely the knowledge content-driven path and the search method-driven path;sixth,there are two paths in low-product innovation,namely the weak search method and the weak search content path.Compared with previous related researches,the innovation of this research is mainly reflected in the following aspects: First,this article expands the boundaries of knowledge search related research and makes up for some research deficiencies.First of all,this research abandons the traditional knowledge search division and adopts a two-dimensional division method that combines search content and search methods to more fully explain the external knowledge search strategy of start-ups;secondly,traditional research on knowledge search Mainly aimed at mature companies,and came to the research conclusion of over-searching.For start-ups,no unanimous research conclusions have been obtained.Therefore,this article takes new ventures as the research object,explores the relationship between knowledge search and product innovation,and further supplements the research deficiencies.Second,it opened the black box of new ventures from external knowledge search to product innovation and explained the mechanism of action.At the same time,it explored whether the level of corporate strategic flexibility has an impact on the relationship between knowledge search and product innovation.Third,adopting new research methods to explore the influence paths of new ventures’ external knowledge search,organizational learning,and strategic flexibility on product innovation from the perspective of configuration,and draw the configuration path that affect high product innovation and low product innovation respectively.