The Effects Of The Structure Of Technological Interdependence In Innovation Ecosystem On Integrated Innovation Competitive Advantages Of Firms

Today technological innovation is important for firms to gain competitiveadvantage. Competition between high-tech enterprises has been evolved into "thebattle of supply chain" from "the battle of a single firm", and then escalated to "thebattle of innovation ecosystem". In the innovation ecosystem, any enterprises aredifficult to hold all the cutting-edge technology. That greatly promoted theenterprises’ collaborative innovation in R&D filed, patents filed and technicalstandard field, to realize flexible specialized division and complementary cooperation.The research of the structure of technological independence in innovation ecosystemon formation and evolution, and their effects on R&D competitive advantage, is ofgreat significance for improving our international R&D competitive advantage.Some key technology bottlenecks often exist beyond the traditionalorganizational boundary in an innovation ecosystem. The successful innovation of onefirm usually depends on others in the ecosystem, especially depends on those firmswith compatible and supporting technologies. This paper clearly defined the conceptof the structure of technological independence in innovation ecosystem, and analysedits formation and three kinds of evolution form. We found that in the structure oftechnological interdependence of an integrated innovation ecosystem, componenttechnologies and complement technologies are two different types of technologiesoutside of an integrated innovation firm, which have significant asymmetric effects onthe firm’s integrated technological innovation. Greater difficulties in componenttechnology development will enhance the competitive advantages of integratedinnovation leaders, while greater difficulties in complement technology developmentwill erode their competitive advantages. With the decrease of uncertainties in thecomponent technologies and integrated technologies, the higher proportion ofcomponents the integrated innovation firms develop independently, the morecompetitive advantages these firms will capture. Based on the theoretical analysis,this paper selected seventy firms of backlight module in the world as the sample, toestablish the module, which provided strong evidence to prove the conclusion. At last,this article further proposed some implications for integrated innovation firms toenhance R&D competitive advantages efficiently. The integrated innovation firmsshould cautiously select their appropriate ecological niches in the ecosystem. They should properly separate self-own intellectual properties and self innovationcapabilities at the right time. Moreover, they should devote great efforts to create anecosphere of complement technologies.