Study On The Impact Of Network Position On Knowledge Acquisition And Competitive Advantage Of New Ventures

With the development of the economy over the world, more and more adventurous people want to win in the market by launching new ventures. New ventures are the newborn strength that has vigor and flexible forms, thus they promote the innovation of the technology while they accelerate the growth of the social and regional economy. Because of the liability of newness which led to its high uncertainty, many new ventures that show a phenomenon of lower survival rate died in the early growth stage. It becomes a concern of many entrepreneurs.In the recent years, many ventures begin to take advantage of the stable relationship with external network to gain support. New ventures also plan to choose network position to solve the problem of the shortage of resources and translate the dependence of new ventures into the dominance. So how to establish the network position for providing the resource advantage of new ventures becomes the key problem of new ventures. Although, existing theoretical research outlined the characteristics of network position and the competitive advantage it brings up, the research on mechanism and context of how network position impacts firms’competitive advantage are still inadequate, and the relative empirical research findings also have some of the conflict, especially those new ventures.Based on the review of the relevant studies of network position, knowledge acquisition and competitive advantage of new ventures, focusing on how to build an appropriate network position to enhance the competitive advantage, this paper establishes a model of network position, knowledge acquisition and competitive advantage. This paper also explore three closely related questions step by step:First, what are the impacts of network positions on competitive advantage? Second, what are the impacts of knowledge acquisition on competitive advantage? Third, what are the mechanisms of knowledge acquisition on the relationship between network position and competitive advantage? Empirically, this paper was conducted with a questionnaire and the data was get from related new ventures. We apply data factor analysis and linear regression analysis to test the theoretical model and hypothesis raised. Through the above research, some conclusions can be presented as follows:(1)Based on the relevant researches, this paper uses centrality, network heterogeneity and network density to measure the network position and studies their impacts on the competitive advantage. The empirical results suggest that they have positive impacts on the competitive advantage. Specifically, on one hand, the prominent position has impacts on new ventures’acquisition of rare resources and knowledge, and establishing closed contact and trust between pairs, which can lower the cost of acquiring new resources, get support and promote the resource advantages. On the other hand, those new ventures in structural hole position can gain more heterogeneous knowledge, which pave the way of strengthening the independent innovation capability and provide helps for sustaining the competitive advantage. However, too much water drowned the miller. If the firms maintain high levels on network position, it may result in poor performance.(2)As the network theories developed, more and more researchers find that the effects of network position on the competitive advantage for the new venture mostly depend on the knowledge acquisition. The network position of new venture can result in the acquisition of resources. But not all the resource would promote the competitive advantage of new venture. Only those valuable, rare resources that are difficult to get are good for the competitive advantage. The empirical researches show that the knowledge acquisition performs the intermediation functions between the network position and the competitive advantage for the new venture.