| Science-and-Technology-Oriented Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (S&T SMEs) are the source of technical innovation vitality, the basis of overall high-tech industry, the main power of realizing technology leapfrogging as well as an important support for knowledge-based economy. After the national "Eleventh-Five plan" and the "Mid-Long Term Development Plan of Science and Technology were issued, the whole nation has put more and more attention on improving enterprises innovative capability and building up an innovation-oriented country. The key point to realize this strategy is to exert the crucial force role of S&T SMEs.Twenty-eight years has passed since the state policy of reform and opening-up was launched, however, awkwardly we find that in the world there has been no comparatively large industry whose leading technology, design, brand and service were first advanced or created by Chinese enterprises. Why are so many Chinese enterprises struggling to be bigger and stronger but rarely succeed? Within the twenty-eight years after the reform and opening to the outside world, we have witnessed many enterprises fell on their way of growth although they once had been well-known and stirring in China What on earth is the real cause? It's the reason of system, competence, thinking, or culture?In my opinion, in order to decipher the great difference, in performance for enterprises under distinct system and policy environment, we may locate our research on management system, operation, policy and culture. On the other hand, for enterprises of similar system and policy environment, we should step into enterprises to research and then decipher their success and failure of strategy as well as the difference of operation performance. Currently, in our country S&T SMEs are facing restriction from both inner and outer environment obstacles, while most scholars focus more on outer environment, that is, they pay more attention on financing, policy, system, culture environment of S&T SMEs but less attention on critical issues such as operation mindset, strategy, corporate capability and innovation willingness of S&T SMEs. Available literatures of academic and pragmatic researches for decisive factors and influential factors on S&T SMEs' performance as well as their internal functional mechanisms are scarce; many researches still rest on qualitative researches and corresponding measurements. Oriented on the double views of comprehensive inner-outer environment analysis, this dissertation has deeply explored and discussed the key issues which restrict and influence S&T SMEs' existence and development, innovation and management as well as improvement of their own innovation capability.Under the above research background and significance, and based on the theories of entrepreneurs' ability, innovation management as well as growth of SMEs, we have carried on an in-depth survey on 327 S&T SMEs, 17 large S&T enterprises, 115 Non-S&T enterprises, 167 S&T SME' entrepreneurs as well as 272 middle-level managers and common staff, using methods of interviews, questionnaires and long-term tracking. The theoretical analysis and empirical study will then ultimately come into form as described in this dissertation.In this dissertation, the following three major propositions for existence and development of current China S&T SMEs were deeply studied both theoretically and empirically:1. What is the biggest obstacle for S&T SMEs' growth and development?2. Why has the obstacle come into existence, how will it influence corporate performance?3. How to remove the obstacle which is the core issue we've focused?Through in-depth study of the above three propositions, this dissertation has revealed for us the strategic source for S&T SMEs' innovation and success, that is, entrepreneurs' thinking incarceration is the biggest obstacle of restricting enterprises' existence and development, innovation and management, while the ultimate know-how for S&T SMEs to achieve success of innovation and growth is "thinking-innovation". In detail, main work and conclusions of this study are bellow:1. Correlative analysis of R&D input intension and economic output S&T SMEs has revealed that S&T SMEs' R&D input intension has no relationship with economic output, statistically speaking, S&T SMEs' willingness to improve performance based on increasing R&D input proportion is not supported by practical cases of this study.2. Difference analysis of growth for small-sized and medium-sized S&T enterprises has found that in our country small-sized S&T enterprise's economic output index, staff input index and ratio index of latest three years are a bit higher than those of medium-sized S&T enterprises, but there is no distinct gap between them. The distinct difference only exists in output-value ratio of new products between these two kinds of enterprises.3. Analysis of S&T SMEs' current situation and surrounding obstacles has revealed science and technology system and financing difficulty are not the biggest obstacle which influence and restrict enterprises' growth and development. The biggest problem faced by corporate innovation and management is entrepreneurs' thinking-incarceration and operation short-sight Entrepreneurs' thinking innovation capability, decision-making ability, and leadership competence are the most important factors on enterprises' development. Researches of large-number of practical cases has revealed that entrepreneurs' short-sight thinking and management defects is the critical reason for why so many S&T SMEs cannot achieve long-term and sustaining development.4. In the relationship analysis of S&T SMEs' operation abilities and performance, in order to reflect S&T SMEs' innovation and management behavior, we have constructed a CP model(Competence and Performance) through methods of SPSS statistical analysis and Structural Equation. It is a kind of corporate model system which may influence corporate performance, as well it has integrated with corporate capability, operation strategies and innovation initiative. The CP model is able to well explain and reveal functional mechanism and internal correlation among entrepreneur's quality, operation competence (including entrepreneurs' competence and organizational competence) , performance, innovation initiative and operation strategies. Through exploring and validating researches, this study has indicated that organizing competence is the most crucial ability which influences corporate performance, but contributions to the performance of entrepreneurs' competence and organizing competence are nearly the same. As far as organizing competence is concerned, business and innovation competence are the most important, while concerning entrepreneurs' competence, thinking-innovation competence and strategy-management competence are the most important. So the biggest competitiveness of S&T SMEs are generated from business competence, innovation competence, thinking-innovation competence as well as strategy-management competence, instead of daily management competence or social interpersonal competence, management system or corporate culture. Therefore, the level of entrepreneurs' daily management and social interpersonal competence are not key performance influential factors. Entrepreneurs can solve issues of lack of these abilities by employing or selecting elites who are capable in these aspects. However, thinking-innovation and strategy-management competence of entrepreneurs can not be replaced; business operators who are not qualified in these two aspects are destined to bring poor performance to their enterprises.5. This study has discovered that business operators' willingness to innovation are deeply influenced by innovation perception which is decided by innovation environment, government's functional positioning of S&T innovation and S&T service effects. Business operators' willingness to innovation and enterprise operation strategy has obvious interactive effects on the enterprise's performance. In general, entrepreneurs' quality decides the entrepreneurs' competence. The entrepreneurs' competence and enterprises' organizing competence decides the company performance, but company performance is not only decided by operation competence, but also decided by the entrepreneurs' willingness to innovate and enterprises' operation strategy. Business operators' willingness to innovation has an adjusting effect and can influence direction and volume between influence operation competence and performance. The results of this study has indicated that in terms of enterprises team of low-willingness to innovate, innovation competence contributes to company performance more than business competence, and management and corporate culture has no significant influence, while in terms of enterprises team of high-willingness to innovation, business competence has the highest effect on company performance. The innovation competence has the second, corporate culture has the lowest, management system has no obvious effect6. Through researches on effects of entrepreneurs' first competence, that is, thinking-innovation competence, this study has discovered that business operators' thinking-innovation competence has nothing to do with educational background, working years, working-time in enterprise, source of experience, risk preference, learning tendency, enterprise founder or not, as well as company size, running period since founded, technological level, family enterprises or not, but obviously negative-related to business operators' intuitive thinking and obviously positive-related to career attitude and social network. This finding tells us that higher degree, longer working years, longer time in the enterprise, larger company size should not result in a stronger thinking-innovation competence. Also, being the creator of the enterprise does not mean his/her stronger thinking-innovation competence, being a family enterprise does not mean it has a worse thinking-innovation competence. This finding also has revealed that why so many entrepreneurs with such a degree, high intelligence quotient, in high-tech R&D and management field, even enterprises founders back from overseas, often come into traps of thinking-incarceration. This statistical conclusion also provide a powerful evidence that later-established companies may defeat former-established companies, SMEs may defeat large corporations. Obviously, if larger scale, longer establishing time, stronger thinking-innovation competence means a better performance, it will definitely result in strange phenomenon such as "former-started companies will always be larger than the later-started, larger-sized companies will always be stronger than the smaller-sized". However, in fact this phenomenon does not exist7. In the study of entrepreneurs' thinking-incarceration of S&T SMEs, empirical researches have been carried on issues such as entrepreneurs' operation mindset, employment thinking, time and energy distribution, training thinking, self innovation thinking, brand-building thinking, etc. Pain and harm of entrepreneurs' thinking-incarceration have been fully uncovered, and subsequently in-depth research has been carried to study causes which generate entrepreneurs' thinking-incarceration and corresponding mechanisms. The key to evaluate entrepreneur' competence is the insight of industry development direction by unveiling the disturbing surroundings. If one entrepreneur immerges himself in forepassed success experiences, development mode or running strategy, limits himself in old methods and principles, without in phase with era and social development, if he/she can not make clear the future development direction or lack of technological anticipation ability, especially if he/she is accustomed to make decisions relying on instinct and experience without discussion with others, he/she is in the trap of thinking-incarceration. Subsequently, the enterprises led by this kind of entrepreneur will inevitably face high risk of innovation and operation, like a piece of Noah's Ark in the ocean. If entrepreneurs are not open-minded enough to think over important issues like company future development, and they are not positive enough to develop his/her social network and communicate experience of innovation and management with others, their company may probably be trapped into risky woods due to lack of predicting judgment or not adapted to development trend of industries. The key reason of why companies' lack of self-innovation ability is that the entrepreneurs of S&T SMEs have fallen into the trap of thinking-incarceration. They have distinct gaps in operation mindset, thinking-innovation competence, strategy-management competence, and technology-prediction competence when comparing with those who are doing well in these aspects. The primary premise of improving company self-innovation ability is to look for source of achieving innovation and management success within the company. This finding is not obtained from literature analysis but large quantity of practical cases. An enterprise who can not offer innovation achievement and management thinking for the world, obviously, cannot become an excellent enterprise which has influence on the whole world, let alone leap from the excellent to the superior. Similarly, entrepreneurs' lack of insight thinking, and trapped in thinking-incarceration, cannot lead S&T SMEs to be excellent or even superior. Past researches always assume entrepreneurs are innovative, or they are willing to innovate suppose a good innovation environment exists, but actually many entrepreneurs of S&T companies in our country, often step into the trap of thinking-incarceration, they have no impetus nor willingness of innovation. They are engaging in high-tech products and services R&D of the 21st century, but their thinking and management mindset often stay at experience management era of 19 century, this is well deserved to be meditated by ourselves. So how to quickly improve entrepreneurs' thinking-innovation competence becomes the key point of support and develop S&T SMEs.In conclusion, to this research, a large quantity of theoretical and empirical studies has been carried to state: what is biggest issue faced by S&T SMEs? How can this issue can be formed? How can we solve this biggest issue? Innovations have been made in the following aspects:1. S&T SMEs' R&D intension are not related to their economic output. Economic output is only positive-related to total scientific and technological input, and is not related to R&D input proportion. It has not been supported by practical cases of this research that companies can improve their economic output by increasing their R&D input proportion. The major way of improving company performance is depended on other more complex internal factors instead of relying on increasing R&D input proportion. Evidence of practical cases indicates that S&T SMEs have distinct differences only in scale-oriented indexes, but no difference in proportion or structure oriented indexes.2. Through exploring and validatory researches, CP (Competence and Performance) model of S&T SME entrepreneurs' innovation and management based on the logic mechanisms among entrepreneurs' quality, operation competence, performance, innovation initiative and operation strategies. This model has revealed that company operation performance is determined by interactive effect integrated by corporate capability, operation strategies and innovation willingness. Among them, competence is the basis, while innovation willingness and operation strategies have obvious interactive effect. This model has denied the opinion that lack of capital, system defect, bad innovation and business environment which are the biggest obstacle for achieving company innovation and management success. There are only external factors that may influence entrepreneurs' innovation perception, and then exert influence on performance indirectly by influencing innovation willingness. Similarly, this model denied the common understanding that one can become an excellent entrepreneur if he or she is hard-working, courageous, and adventurous. However, the exact defining variables which intrinsically influence company innovation and management are company operation and organizing competence, especially business, innovation, and entrepreneurs' thinking-innovation competence. Therefore, the critical source determines the company's strategies and innovation mainly come from entrepreneurs' quality and operation competence.3. This dissertation puts forward the judgment of thinking-innovation competence being the first and foremost competence of S&T SMEs' entrepreneurs. Thinking, the original impetus of prompting economic growth and social development, is as well the ultimate force of founding an evergreen business. The weakness of entrepreneurs' strategy management, daily management and social ability can be remedied by selecting competent employees, but thinking-innovation competence is not substitutable. Entrepreneurs with strong thinking-innovation competence can successfully bring companies from a business-starter structure to a developing structure, while entrepreneurs who are trapped in thinking-incarceration often bring companies to risky dilemma or failure, just like a piece of Noah Ark in the ocean. It is not short of capital or no technological breakthroughs which make it difficult for ST SMEs to develop, but entrepreneurs' weak operation capability. Entrepreneurs' short sightedness and thinking-incarceration, and even behaviors like falsification, cheating customers, squeezing staff, distorting customer value network and staff value system are the very reasons that companies can not develop to become larger or stronger.4. It is concluded in this dissertation that the key measurements for governments to prompt S&T innovation and support S&T SME' development are actually enhancing the impetus mechanism of entrepreneurs' self-innovation, ensuring their innovation benefits, reducing their innovation risk and cost. The principal point of a government's supporting S&T innovation is not to offer tax discount and capital assistance, but to exert the function of industry associations and social groups so as to offer knowledge assistance (business knowledge and ethics) and then actually enhancing entrepreneurs' thinking-innovation competence and their decision-making level. |
PDF Full Text Request