The External Technology Acquisition Of Integrated Innovation In Equipment Industry

Equipment industry is the technological backbone of the national economy. With the background of technology base and innovation resources lagging behind, Chinese enterprises are confronted with the challenges of reducing technological gap. With technological knowledge expanding rapidly, external available technology sources also increase rapidly. Enterprises need not and cannot master all the knowledge of product development and production, and they are requied to specialize in using external technology sources. Equipment products are typical complex products and systems. Technologies of equipment products are especially complex, and the technical width and depth needed to innovation exceed the ones of mass-production products. Innovation will fail owing to lack of several technologies, which is called cask effect. With the investigation, it is found that some enterprises have reduced technological gap with leading enterprises through integrating self-created technologies and external ones on product system, which are valuable samples for the study. Choosing equipment industry as the research object, this paper explores the relationship of external technolgy acquisition and integrated innovation performance. The paper will provide management support for enterprises to keep self-determined innovation in the process of using external technology.The paper adopts a combined method of theory analysis, case study and statistics. Firstly, the literature review is written based on reading and analyzing the theories of complex product and systems, technology integration, open innovation and external technology acquisition. The pre-survey questionnaire is designed for integrated innovation of equipment industry. Based on the interviews with technological managers of product development, the existing questions are modified and the new ones are added. Therefore, the formal questionnaire is designed, and an in-depth field survey is conducted in more than ten equipment manufacturers. Personnel interviews are adopted to gather more than eighty questionnaires in order to improve validity of observation. Then, case study and statitical analysis are conducted to provide firm empirical support for the entire research.External technology sources are studied. Firstly, the five external sources are chosen as research objects, which are suppliers, users, competitors, universities and research institutes, R&D service companies. Based on case study and descriptive statistics, it's analyzed the effect of each external technology source on integrated innovation. The studies show that R&D services industry has grown rapidly in The United States and European Union. Therefore, R&D services companies, the representatives of the third-party technology providers, have been a vital external technology source. Third-party technology providers are organizations to be commissioned to provide technologies for user companies. The-third party means that they are not directly competitive with user companies on product markets, that is, the two parties are not competitors in the same industry. Based on cases study, it's analyzed the effect of third-party technology providers on integrated innovation. The study shows that based on Chinese enterprises' capability development, third-party technology providers increase chances for Chinese enterprises growing up, and cooperating with third-party technology providers could solve the technological bottleneck of product development and accelerate the catch-up process. Chinese enterprises can take an initiative of technology innovation while using external technology sources.It's studied the effect of external technology acquisition on integrated innovation performance. Firstly, the research view is confirmed. From width and depth aspects, external technology acquisition is studied. The width means the types of external technology sources, and the depth means the extent of using external technology sources in the product development. Based on theory research and field study, it's analyzed that the effect of the width and depth of external technology acquisition to integrated innovation performance, the width and depth of external technology acquisition to system integration capability, and system integration capability to integrated innovation performance. Then, the research has formed several hypotheses. The statistic results show that the width and depth of external technology acquisition could directly improve the performance of product innovation performance of technology integration. Meanwhile, system integration capability is acting a mediator between the width of external technology acquisition and product innovation performance. That is to say, through promoting system integration capability growth, the width of external technology acquisition could indirectly improve the performance of product innovation. System integration capability is also acting a mediator between the depth of external technology acquisition and product innovation performance.