Synergy And Mechanism, Based On Open Innovation, Technological Learning

Technological innovation is the soul of enterprises for their survival and development. Weakness of Chinese enterprises in indigenous innovation is becoming the shackle of sustainable development. International and open innovation paradigm brings great opportunity for Chinese enterprises to learn technology from domestic and overseas more abroad and deeply, and then integrate international advantage to promote the innovation capability and competitive position. Nevertheless, the opportunity company with international and open innovation does not mean that all enterprises can develop themselves significantly. One of the underlying causations, which result in the undeveloped innovation capability, is the insufficiency and inaccuracy of technological learning. Therefore, it is of strategic practical significance for us to study how enterprises to promote indigenous innovation through effective technological learning under open innovation. This research is carried through around this important problem.Since the publication of March's pioneering article, the term "exploration" and "exploitation" have increasing come to dominate analyses of organizational learning. Nevertheless, these researches focus more attention to the contradiction between explorative learning and exploitative learning and how to balance them, there's nearly no researcher to probe into the synergy and dynamics of these two different learning, or their mechanism and path to facilitate innovation performance. So, it is of great significance to study the synergy and mechanism of explorative learning and exploitative learning to development organization learning theoretic system and provide useful practical direction.Based on these backgrounds, this thesis is tried to analyze the following problems. (1) The impact of explorative and exploitative learning on innovation performance. (2) The synergy and dynamics of these two different learning. (3) The mechanism and path of explorative and exploitative learning to facilitate innovation performance. To settle these problems, based on literature research, the author implements research through field investigations and interviews more than twenty enterprises located in Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Guangzhou, and a big-sample questionnaire investigation. With typical case study, mathematic statistic and SEM model, the main contents and results of this research are listed as follows:Firstly, in order to maintain sustainable innovation, organizations need to integrate multi-domain technological capabilities which can cultivate only through combining explorative learning and exploitative learning in long term. Based on the theory of open innovation, this thesis analyzes the impact of open innovation on the paradigm for enterprises to obtain sources, and suggests that access to external resources considerably eases the constraint imposed on organization by the scarcity of internal resources. Consequently, instead of contradiction, there is interdependence and complementary between exploration and exploitation, and enterprises can and need to insist these two different learning types similarly, and then facilitate their innovation.Secondly, sustainable innovation needs synergy of exploration and exploitation in technological learning, but it neither means a perfect rate of two kinds of learning, nor a balance percentage for organization to allocate resources. Based on the U-A dynamic pattern of innovation, through case study and variance analysis, this thesis explores the dynamics of two kind of learning. It is found, that the importance of explorative technological learning descend significantly from fluid, transition to specific stages, while the exploitative one achieves the most important in specific stages. So, it is suggested for enterprises to modulate their exploration and exploitation in technological learning according the dynamics of technological innovation, instead of maintaining an invariable proportion.Thirdly, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and classical statistic analysis are used to discuss the mechanism of explorative and exploitative technological learning. The result of empirical research manifests that explorative and exploitative technological learning can facilitate innovation performance significantly; meanwhile, the two kinds of technological learning are affected by the organization strategy and the supports from leaders, the organizational culture which supporting technological learning, the mechanism of knowledge transform and integration, internal resources, and external resources. So, in order to accelerate the synergy between two kinds of technological learning and then promote enterprises innovation, it is suggested that enterprises needs to combine with these controllable factors, and attach more importance to some factors selectively according to the dynamics of learning.Fourthly, through multiple regression analysis, the circumstance turbulence's modulatory effect on the relation between technological learning and innovation performance. It shows that the turbulence of circumstances has modulatory effect on the relation between explorative technological learning and innovation performance, but has no modulatory effect on the relation between exploitative technological learning and innovation performance. This result suggests that exploitation in technological learning is of the same importance regardless the extent of the circumstance turbulence. In environments with little competitive pressure, enterprises can profit from refining and recombining their existing technological knowledge; while in changing and volatile environments, enterprises must consciously focus on exploring new technology and renewing their resource stock in order to sustain their competitive position.