A Study Of The Effect And Mechanism Of Innovation Partner Heterogeneity And Open Innovation Performance

Under traditional 'closed' innovation concept,organizational boundaries and innovation processes are relatively closed.On one hand,enterprises conduct high-intensity R&D activities in order to gain core competitiveness of technical monopoly and technological barriers,on the other hand,the confidentiality and sole ownership of new technologies are highly valued to avoid technology spillover or technology leaks.However,with the development of economic globalization,the spatial connection and interaction between innovative elements have a remarkable extension in both breadth and depth,and approaches to innovation elements are getting more and more various.Open innovation came into being under this opportunity.Enterprises step beyond the boundaries of technology,organization and culture during open innovation and achieve integration of resources on value chain.With the amendments and expansions of the concept of open innovation,its extension and connotation are also expanded and enriched at different levels.However,the dimensions of innovation partner heterogeneity itself are complicated,and different dimensions have different routines to affect innovation performance.Therefore,there is a great controversy on the relationship between innovation partner heterogeneity and innovation performance,and heterogeneities on different dimensions have significantly different effects on innovation performance.This paper researches the core question of 'how to make full of heterogeneity resources to improve open-innovation performance' following three clues.First,from the view of knowledge basis,combination of heterogeneity knowledge elements is the basis of innovation in enterprises.Information gained from different groups and channels has a positive effect on innovation performance.Second,from the view of learning,open innovation provides access to heterogeneity resources,but cannot assure that enterprises can distinguish and absorb the heterogeneity knowledge,so decreases possibility of combination innovation.Learning ability of an organization is an important source of competitive advantage,and has different effects on knowledge distinguishing,use,and transformation.Third,from the view of social capital,open innovation is affected by network,analyze the connection and interaction between endogenous heterogeneity and external environment or partners.On this basis,we empirically explore the effect mechanism of partner heterogeneity(organizational type heterogeneity,technology ability heterogeneity and target goal heterogeneity),learning(inquiry learning,application learning)and network on innovation performance.Base on this,relative theoretical hypotheses are formulated and a theoretical model is set up.Relative variables are tested on the theoretical hypotheses,and sample data from four provinces(Guangdong,Zhejiang,Chongqing,Sichuan)is collected by 284 valid questionnaires.The questionnaires show that the questions used in this research have good reliability and validity,further tested the rationality of the relationship hypotheses between innovation partner heterogeneity and innovation performance.In general,the empirical results are supportive to most of the theoretical hypotheses in this research.The results show that:(1)Open innovation partner organizational type heterogeneity has an inverted U-shaped relationship with innovation performance;open innovation partner technological ability heterogeneity has an inverted U-shaped relationship with innovation performance;open innovation partner target heterogeneity has a negative effect on innovation performance;(2)Organizational type heterogeneity has a positive effect on exploratory learning;exploratory learning plays an intermediary role in the relationship between organizational type heterogeneity and innovation performance;organizational type heterogeneity has an inverted U-shaped relationship with exploitative learning;exploitative learning plays intermediary role in the relationship between organizational type heterogeneity and innovation performance;technological ability heterogeneity has a positive effect on exploratory learning;exploratory learning plays an intermediary role in the relationship between technological ability heterogeneity and innovation performance;technological ability heterogeneity has an inverted U-shaped relationship with exploitative learning;exploitative learning plays intermediary role in the relationship between technological ability heterogeneity and innovation performance;technological ability heterogeneity and exploratory learning have a positive effect;target heterogeneity has a negative effect on exploratory learning;exploratory learning plays an intermediary role in the relationship between target heterogeneity and innovation performance;target heterogeneity has a negative effect on exploitative learning;exploitative learning plays an intermediary role in the relationship between target heterogeneity and innovation performance.(3)Exploratory learning has a positive influence on open innovation performance;exploitative learning has a positive influence on open innovation performance.(4)Network can adjust the inverted U-shaped relationship between organizational type heterogeneity and innovation performance;it can enhance the positive effect of organizational type heterogeneity and decrease the negative effect of organizational type heterogeneity;network positively adjusts the inverted U-shaped relationship between technological ability heterogeneity and innovation performance;it can enhance the positive effect of technological ability heterogeneity and decrease the negative effect of technological ability heterogeneity;network positively adjust the effect between target heterogeneity and innovation performance.Base on the conclusions from the empirical research,this research provides further policy suggestions,management inspirations and future perspectives.The theoretical contribution of this research is mainly embodied in three aspects:First,explicit the 'technological ability heterogeneity' and 'target heterogeneity' under organizational type heterogeneity,deepen the analysis of dimensions of partner heterogeneity and empirically analyze the effects on innovation performance from three dimensions.It also provides a reasonable explanation to current controversy on partner heterogeneity and innovation performance.Second,is a further study and discussion on the relationship and affecting extent between heterogeneity(organizational type heterogeneity,technological ability heterogeneity,and target heterogeneity)and learning style(exploratory learning and exploitative learning),and deeply analyze the mechanism of different heterogeneity affecting innovation performance,which makes up the shortage of existing researches on open innovation performance and innovation mechanism in enterprises.It also provides references and inspirations for open innovation practice in enterprises.Thirdly,it finds out the adjusting function of network on the relationship between open innovation partner heterogeneity and Innovation performance,obviously,the interaction between partner heterogeneity and network is most beneficial to innovation performance.It improves current theoretical model.