Effects Of Interfirm Interdependence On Knowledge Flow In Emerging Innovation Ecosystem

The world today is marked by changes unseen in a century,with globalization and anti-globalization coexisting.These complex international situations pose severe challenges to China’s scientific,technological and economic development.To win in today’s international competition,firms cannot fight alone,firms can embed in a multi-agent network and build interfirm interdependence.Especially for emerging industries,their technologies and industrial chains are not yet mature,and firms’resources are limited.Therefore,actively embedding in the global innovation ecosystem,strengthening inter-firm interaction to promote international knowledge flow is crucial to promote the innovation and development of emerging industries.Then,under the new situation,what kind of inter-firm interdependence relationship should be established in the global innovation ecosystem to help the international knowledge flow to promote innovation is a practical problem that needs to be explored urgently.Meanwhile,with the development trend of networking,ecological and internationalization of inter-firm relations,the research on the influence mechanism of knowledge flow should also shift from focusing on binary organizational distance to focusing on linkage networks.On the one hand,competition,cooperation,and other interactions between firms are becoming increasingly close,but there is currently a lack of analysis on how inter-firm interdependence affects knowledge flow.On the other hand,the relationship between firms has transformed from bilateral relationship to more complex and dynamic network relationship,and the network has become an important situation in the study of knowledge flow.Therefore,this study will start from the perspective of the global innovation ecosystem,based on the question of "how inter-firm interdependence in the innovation ecosystem affects the international knowledge flow",combining innovation ecology,strategy dynamics,network resource view,social network theory to carry out research from the macroscopic and microscopic levels,advance step by step,discussed the following three research topics:First,based on a systematic review of previous literature,the research conceptualizes the inter-firm interdependence of the innovation ecosystem in the emerging industries as behavior-based embedded cooperation interdependence,structure-based technology-competition interdependence,and industry-ecology interdependence.At the same time,with the help of social network analysis methods,combined with machine learning and deep learning methods,the interdependences of firms in the innovation ecosystem are measured.Second,from a mesoscopic perspective,the research constructs a conceptual model of the influence mechanism of the interdependence network of embedded cooperation behavior,technology-competition structure,and industry-ecology structure on the international knowledge flow network in the innovation ecosystem.The 3D printing industry was selected as a case for analysis,and the global 3D printing industry data from 2005 to 2016 were collected and cleared for empirical research.The study found that the interdependence network of embedded cooperation behavior,technology-competition structure,and industry-ecology structure all have significant positive effects on the international knowledge flow network,and the scale-heterogeneity network positively moderates the relationship between the interdependence network of embedded cooperation behavior,technology-competition structure,and industry-ecology structure and the international knowledge flow network.Third,based on research findings at the microscopic lever,the research further analyzes the impact of embedded cooperation linkage,embedded cooperation dominance,technology-competition similarity breadth,technology-competition similarity strength,industry-ecology complementarity breadth,and industry-ecology complementarity strength on international knowledge flow.The research finds that the breadth of technology-competition similarity,the breadth of industry-ecology complementarity,and the strength of industry-ecology complementarity positively affect the flow of international knowledge.flow relationship.Firms’ coreness positively regulate the relationship between embedded cooperation linkage,embedded cooperation dominance,technology-competition similarity breadth,and international knowledge flow.The main research contributions of this study are as follows:Firstly,deconstruct the inter-firm interdependence in the innovation ecosystem into behavior-based embedded cooperation behavior interdependence,structure-based technology-competition structure interdependence,industrial ecological structure interdependence,expand and enrich the conceptual connotation and theoretical basis of inter-firm interdependence in innovation ecosystem.Secondly,by introducing the theory of innovation ecology,the research on the influencing factors of knowledge flow is expanded from the binary organizational distance to the inter-firm interdependence and interaction network,which enriches the research on inter-firm interdependence and the influencing factors of knowledge flow.Thirdly,combined with strategic dynamics,network resource view,and social network theory,this paper expands the research on the influence mechanism of inter-firm interdependence in emerging industries on international knowledge flow.Fourth,combined with machine learning,deep learning,and Quadratic Assignment Procedure(QAP)for network construction and regression analysis,the application of emerging research methods in the field of innovation management was explored.