A Research On The Relationship Of Network Capability And Innovation Performance

The concept of "Open Innovation" was brought forward by Chesbrough (2003). After that, the concept has been approved widely by scholars from home and abroad. It has also become a hot issue of academic research in the field of innovation and management as well as the dominant paradigm of innovation in enterprises'practice (Elmquist et al.,2009; Lichtenthale,2008). This new paradigm has brought new structural basis to change:the internet will face more fuzzy structural limits, lower limits on knowledge flow, reduced inner dependency of research and development and highly sophisticated interface. As a result, enterprises need to develop their capabilities on network. Although the development of network capability is an essential element in improving innovative performance, enterprises are facing the problem of choosing their openness level. Openness level is the standard to measure the degree of openness innovation of a company. Under-open will limit a company to the closed innovation paradigm and the company can't realize the advantages of an open innovation while over-open will cause problems such as attention allocation in management of enterprises, dependence on external technology and disclosure of internal technology knowledge. As a result, the influences that open innovation have on innovation performance are complicated. The interactions between the degree of openness and network capability, the degree of openness and innovation efficiency have become major research topics.Meanwhile, the research on the network capability has neglected the impacts that open innovation had on traditional framework of network capability. It also didn't answer the question the relation between openness and network capability as well as how do network capability and openness effect innovation performance.In this article, effective data from 206 companies'has been collected by using questionnaires. The paper also does research on issues including dimensions of the network capability with open innovation, its influences on innovation performance, the influence of open degree to innovation performance, interactions between enterprises'network capability, degree of openness and innovation performance and corresponding relations between network capability and open degree by using statistical method including exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and regression analysis. In the meantime, this paper has verified the research model and research hypothesis and comes to the following conclusion:(1) The network capability with open innovation includes network strategic capability, network process capability and network relationship capability. These three dimensions are in accordance with the dilemma which is faced by enterprises with open innovation and they are effective measures for getting those enterprises out of dilemma.(2) Network strategic capability, network process capability and network relationship capability have significant positive influences on innovation performance which means network capability has significant influences on innovation performance.(3) There is U figure curve relation between the degree of openness and innovation performance. The inverted U curve relation between the span of openness and innovation performance has not been proved because the sample companies in data analysis were with lower degree of openness in general.(4) Network strategic capability, network relationship capability and the degree of openness all have obvious positive interactions with innovation performance. The interaction of innovation performance under openness has been influenced because the network capabilities of the sample companies are comparatively low. In another words, the hypothesis that the interaction which network capability and degree of openness have with innovation performance has not been proved.(5) The wider the openness is, the more contribution of the network strategic capability has to the innovation performance compared with network process capability and network relationship capability. However, the deeper the openness is, the more contribution of the network relationship capability has to the innovation performance compared with network strategic capability and network process capability.This paper has combined the research of network capability with the degree of openness to make up deficiency of the isolated research in the past and has deepened the relative research on open innovation and network capability. This paper is based on innovation performance. It can clarify the defects and causes of in enterprises' organizing processes of open innovation practices and provide useful inspirations and improved thoughts to innovation problems faced by enterprises.