Research On The Relationship Between Network Position And Inbound Open Innovation Practice

Under the industrial technology development environment where knowledge and technology quickly updated and product life cycle constantly shortened,firms cannot achieve continual technological innovation by traditional close innovation strategy relying only on internal research and development.While,inbound open innovation,which means firms integrate and utilize internal and external innovation resource at the same time,and cooperate with other technology subjects extensively,has become a vital approach for modern firms to acquire competitiveness.From inside of the enterprise,prior studies show that firm size,absorb capacity and innovation climate are important antecedents for its inbound open innovation.From outside of the enterprise,innovation network is the main carrier for its inbound open innovation practice,which makes innovation network a crucial research perspective on how to improve firms' inbound open innovation practice.Enterprises' planning and regulation to innovation network position could improve their inbound open innovation practice effectively.Meantime,technology grouping generated with the developing evolution of industrial technology have become a vital environmental character for enterprises to consider when planning and regulating innovation network;therefore,to discuss the relationship between innovation network position and inbound open innovation practice considering the moderating effect of technology grouping has great importance on both research and practice.This paper chooses virtual reality & augmented reality,3D print,hybrid electric vehicle and unmanned aerial vehicle as research object and introduces industrial technology concentration ratio as a criterion to divide the development of industrial technology,and use a stage model to explore the impact of innovation network position and technology grouping on inbound open innovation by conducting patent citation network analysis and hierarchical regression analysis with patent data of main enterprises in these four emerging industries during 1997~2017.By testing all the hypotheses,results show that :(1)The development of industry technology presents distinct stage features as initial stage,growing stage and stable stage with the existence of technology grouping in the innovation network all along;(2)The centrality of enterprises in innovation network positively affect its inbound open innovation during initial and growing stage of industrial technology development,but show negative effect during the stable stage;and the connectivity of enterprises in innovation network positively affect its inbound open innovation along with the industrial technology development;(3)The clustering of technology grouping a firm involved in has a positive moderating effect on the relationshipbetween its network position and inbound open innovation practice along with industrial technology development.However,the bridge ties only have positive moderating effect between network position and inbound open innovation during initial and growing stage,and show no moderating effect during stable stage.Our results indicate that firms should pay attention to the planning and governing of its network position with regards to the stage of industrial technology development,and enter into an actively interactive technology grouping by initiative and prospective technology forecast,development and application to benefit on inbound open innovation practice.Based on the research perspective of innovation network,this paper builds a refining research framework on the relationship between innovation network position,technology grouping and inbound open innovation practice,which helps firms to make reasonable planning for its network position under different industrial technology developments,and make advantage of technology grouping to enhance its inbound open innovation practice.