The Influence Mechanism Of Partner Matching On Business Model Innovation

In the context of an open collaboration environment,collaborating to create value by connecting with external relationships is critical for an enterprise to be able to identify and learn skills from external partners.Previous research has shown that open collaborative strategies are more effective for complex organizational innovation.Nowadays,enterprises are increasingly engaging in open collaboration as a complementary opportunity to acquire and learn professional knowledge across organizational boundaries,and to monitor external market and technology trends to maximize value capture with innovative business models.However,while open cooperation strategy can help enterprises obtain external knowledge to foster self-enhancing benefits.As firms open up their innovation processes,the ecosystem is seen as a complex ecological system of collaborative network,different types of participants with different backgrounds and attributes,requiring the weighing of multiple aspects of partner characteristics into the analysis to make the partner selection process more effective by comprehensive and multi-dimensional analysis.Thus,based on a practical and theoretical background on the drivers of collaboration-based business model innovation,this paper explores how partner matching affect the way of firms capture value.On the one hand,this paper firstly sorts out relevant studies on the standards and characteristics of partner matching.Based on the resource theory,it is confirmed that enterprises need more external knowledge resources and technologies to deploy innovation.Due to the role and distinct characteristics of partners in the process of cooperation,partner complementarity,partner compatibility and partner synergy are proposed as three important factors to improve the degree of partner matching.Secondly,it explores the evolutionary relationship of value co-creation between partners from the organizational level and the system level,and proposes that value acquisition cannot be achieved without value innovation capabilities.Thus,the interfirm dynamic capability based on partnership explains the comprehensive value innovation capabilities of learning,reconstruction and coordination capabilities,and is also conducive to the business model innovation simultaneously.Therefore,the theoretical models of partner matching,interfirm dynamic capability and business model innovation are constructed.On the other hand,the structural equation model is used to demonstrate the complex causal relationship among partner matching,interfirm dynamic capabilities,innovation ecological environment and business model innovation.Firstly,this paper found that the three dimensions of partner matching has different impacts on business model innovation.Secondly,interfirm dynamic capabilities play a positive mediating role in the relationship between partner matching and efficiency-based business model innovation,and all direct effects are greater than indirect effects.In contrast,interfirm partner dynamic capability positively mediates the relationship between partner matching and novel-based business model innovation,and the indirect effect is greater than the direct effect.This reveals the more important role of interfirm dynamic capabilities in enhancing novel business models innovation.It provides a new way of thinking and framework for studying business model innovation.Finally,the innovation ecosystem has different moderating effects between partner matching and interfirm dynamic capabilities.Thus,in order to activate the innovation capabilities of enterprises to the greatest extent possible,local policy makers need to develop innovation policies to enhance the capabilities of environmental complementary or ecological community dynamics at the cluster level.In the theoretical contributions,this paper firstly expands the application of matching theory and expands the research perspective of business model innovation by identifying and evaluating the influence of three different partners matching on two key themes of business model innovation.Secondly,the dynamic capability at the system level is enriched.The interfirm dynamic capability is summarized as a formative higher-order constructs,which contains comprehensive capabilities such as absorptive ability,coordination ability and collective mind.It not only enriches the boundaries of internal and external learning,but also provides a suitable analytical framework for exploring enterprise value innovation capacities.In a practical implication,it provides guidelines for business managers on how to promote business model innovation in the context of ecosystem environment.Based on the research framework of this paper,by analyzing the effect of partner matching and interfirm dynamic capability on different themes of business model innovation,it can provide targeted business model design schemes.