Study On The Factors Of Impacting Technological Innovation Persistence

Come as knowledge economy, technological innovation has replaced traditional material of capital and labor, it becomes the primary source of economic growth and industrial evolution. As the major body of innovation, enterprises have to take the lead in technological innovation. Sustainable technological innovation is very important, only the enterprises that make technological innovation sustain can maintain the competitive advantage and realize sustainable development. However, it is really difficult for technological innovation to be continuous. The lack of financial support, poor quality of human resources, the lack of demand and technological opportunities will suspend innovation activities. Then the enterprises cannot obtain the continuous competitive advantages and realize the sustained growth of economic results. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to study the driving forces behind innovation activities and find out which factors can promote the enterprises to conduct continuous technological innovation. Then the government should put their attention on these factors when devising the innovation policies.Therefore, this paper will analyze whether there exists persistence in technological innovation and discuss the factors that will influence the degree of persistence. Firstly, this paper analyzes the degree of persistence by using the patent application data of 3712 enterprises from 2004 to 2012. By using Transition Probability Matrix, the empirical analysis indicate the existence of some degree of persistence in innovation activities, it declines as time goes by and increases as the number of patent application goes up, and there exists a threshold to patenting and the threshold is represented by the first patent. Based on literature review, this paper intends to study the influence of historical factors, firm heterogeneity and environmental factors on innovation persistence. The empirical results show that group, R & D institutions, technological opportunity and knowledge base significantly influence the degree of innovation persistence no matter how long the period is. Contrast to these factors, human resources, innovation consciousness and competitiveness will never influence the degree of innovation persistence. What’s more, the past innovation input and output, size, innovation incentives and innovation policies are only in effect in a short period. Therefore, the degree of innovation persistence will affect by various factors. And the government should put their effort into encouraging more enterprises to establish their own R&D institutions and creating an environment that is full of technological opportunities when the devise the innovation policies. There are several innovations in this thesis. Firstly, this paper develops an index that can directly measure the degree of innovation persistence by using Transition Probability Matrix. Secondly, this paper analyzes the influence of various factors under three different time intervals. Thirdly, this paper creatively discusses the influence innovation consciousness and technological regime on innovation persistence.