Research On The Impact Of Technological Diversity And Partner Innovativeness In Supplier Network On Product Innovation

As industry upgrading propelling constantly in China, the manufacturers are facing growing competition pressure from both intra-industry and inter-industry in the world. So product innovation becomes a key factor for manufacturers' survival and development. As the constitution of product is complicated and R&D cycle is long, it is difficulty for manufacturers to meet the requirement of innovation just relying on their own. Supplier network can provide manufacturers with the latest technology, knowledge and other resources and become an important source of external resources for manufactures' product innovation. How to fully exploit supplier network to achieve product innovation is a realistic problem faced by manufacturers. Existing literatures about supplier network mainly focus on the structure and the relationship view, and ignore the heterogeneity among network partners. Based on network resource view, the features about partners affect the network content. A supplier network with technological diversity and partner innovativeness represents that it contains a large number of heterogeneity and nolvety technologies, knowledge elements and so on, so it can affect the the magnitude and quality of knowledge that manufacturer can access. So there is an important link between technological diversity and partner innovativeness in supplier network and manufacturer's innovation output. Whether a supplier network with technological diversity and partner innovativeness is beneficial for manufacturer,s product innovation; how manufacturer take advantage of technological diversity and partner innovativeness effectively for product innovation; how manufacturer make better use of technological diversity and partner innovativeness to improve product innovation. However these questions still lack of enough study.Through reviewing and summarying the existing literature both at home and abroad,understand how manufacturers in China use supplier network for product innovation. On the basis of network resource view, exploring how technological diversity and partners innovativeness in supplier network influence product innovation. Then a conceptual model of the relations among technological diversity and partners innovativeness in supplier network?knowledge integration? social capital and product innovation is presented and the corresponding research hypotheses are put forward. Based on a large-sample survey, collect data from Chinese manufactures.With the help of SPSS20.0 and AMOS24.0 for data processing,the reliability and validity are verified. Moreover, hierarchical regression analysis is performed to test the hyphoneses and came to the conclusions. The innovation of this study and conclusions are as follows:(1)This paper makes clear that a supplier network formed by innovative partners and technological difference among partners is beneficial to manufacturer's product innovation.Existing research about supplier network mainly focuses on structure and relationship view, and ignores the heterogeneity mong partners. A theoretical analysis is implemented on the basis of network resource view, and a empiricial test is carried out, the results show that technological diversity and partner innovativeness both have a positive effect on product innovation.(2)This paper ascertains that knowledge integration plays a mediating role between technological diversity and partner innovativeness in supplier network and product innovation.Existing research mainly focuse on the direct relationship between partners' characteristics and product innovation. Based on network resource view, a supplier network with technological diversity and partner innovativeness can provide rich and innovative knowledge elements; these knowledge elements can be the knowledge that applied directly in innovation activities through manufacturer's knowledge innovation. The research results show that knowledge integration partially mediates the effect of technological diversity and partner innovativeness on product innovation(3)This paper ascertains that by establishing a higher degree of social capital, the manufacturer can make better use of technological diversity and partner innovativeness in supplier network to improve product innovation. Study connects the social capital with the influence of technological diversity and partner innovativeness on product innovation. By theoretical derivation and empirical test, the results indicate that the positive effect of technological diversity and partner innovativeness on product innovation is enhanced by social capital. Social capital also positively moderates the effect of technological diversity and partner innovativeness in supplier network on knowledge integration. A higher social capital can increase the benefits brought by technological diversity and partner innovativeness in supplier network; and by enhancing the effect of technological diversity and partner innovativeness in supplier network on knowledge integration can improve product innovation.