Research On The Influence Of The External Social Network Of Entrepreneurial Team To Innovation Performance In Technology-based New Ventures

Technology foundation is an important driving force for economic development.Technology foundation with high-tech intensive feature frequently makes scientific andtechnological innovative enterprises confront with high-risk, difficult and uncertainenvironment, and thus, in recent years, the entrepreneurial team, as the main business body,has been given extensive attention in theoretical field.Innovation is the core of technology foundation. Knowledge and resources from theentrepreneurial team alone cannot meet the requirements of innovation. Sufficient explorationand utilization of resources derived from the organization outside is a key link in innovation.External social networks with its structure and relationship characteristics affect the flow ofknowledge resources and have ability to restrain and promote the behaviors of the actors inthe networks. Therefore, to make clear the impact mechanisms of external social networks onthe innovation performance of the entrepreneurial team is of great significance to improve theentrepreneurial team performance. However, existing studies, mostly concerned about thedirect impact of external social networks of the entrepreneurial team on innovationperformance, ignoring the impact of the entrepreneurial team behaviors, have seriousdeficiencies. In terms of entrepreneurial team, access to knowledge greatly influences theiruse of external resources. Therefore, to explore the relationship among external socialnetworks of the entrepreneurial team, knowledge acquisition and innovation performance areof great importance to theory and time.Firstly, this paper systematically reviewed the research results at home and abroad, and onthis basis, combining with the characteristics of scientific and technological newentrepreneurial teams, carried out systematical deduction and analysis of the impactingmechanism of the external social networks on the innovative performance in scientific andtechnological entrepreneurial teams. Based on these results, a series of hypothesis wereproposed relating to external social networks, knowledge acquisition, innovation performancerelationship. Meanwhile, the corresponding research model was established, in which theexternal networks of the entrepreneurial team was as the independent variable, innovativeperformance as the dependent variable, knowledge acquisition as mediating variable.Secondly, through empirical study, the characteristics of external social networks of theentrepreneurial teams were descriptively analyzed and the correlation test and regressionanalysis test were carried out to analyze a series of assumptions proposed by the model.Through empirical research, the main conclusions of this paper are as follows: firstly, byanalysis of the composition of the external social networks of entrepreneurial teams based onempirical study, the external social networks of the entrepreneurial teams mainly includestructural dimension and relational dimension, of which structure dimensions contains thethree factors, that is, the network size, network density, network heterogeneity, structuraldimension contains five factors, relationship quality and strength of relationship etc.; secondly,the correlations among the social network structure dimension, relations dimension andknowledge acquisition of the entrepreneurial team were examined, suggesting that thepositive correlations existed among them, in which the relationship quality and relationship strength have the significant prediction ability to knowledge acquisition; thirdly, mediatingeffect analysis indicates that knowledge acquisition plays an intermsediary role in the processof the relationship quality and relationship intensity influencing the innovation performance.