Research On Determinants Of Innovation Based On Knowledge Acquisition

Knowledge, as an important determinant of innovation, has been widely admitted and studied in the management literatures. However, whether in the theory literatures or the empirical studies, the relationship between knowledge acquisition and innovation has not been explored entirely. Based on the theory of organizational innovativeness, this dissertation summarizes and analyzes the research contents of determinants of innovation in the perspective of knowledge acquisition. Furthermore, by means of theoretical deduction, literature research, expert consultation and statistical analysis, the dissertation develops an analysis framework of patterns of knowledge acquisition, studies the advantages and disadvantages of different patterns, and analyzes the relationships between background characteristics and innovation and patterns of knowledge acquisition. Then, the use of 287 photoelectron enterprises as samples and using the research model and the hypotheses presented as starting point, the impacts on innovative performance, which are produced by the patterns of knowledge acquisition and their background characteristics, are examined respectively. At the same time, the relationship of internal and non-internal patterns of knowledge acquisition and the relationship between these patterns and background characteristics are empirically analyzed. Finally, the moderating effects of background characteristics on the relationships between patterns of knowledge acquisition and innovative performance are also tested. The main conclusions are as follows:(1) The analysis on patterns of knowledge acquisition shows that enterprises can obtain knowledge from a lot of patterns. Different patterns of knowledge acquisition have different requirements on enterprise'resources and capabilities and have different advantages and disadvantages. To improve the innovative performance, the patterns of knowledge acquisition should been rationally selected and combined by enterprises.(2) The findings provide support for the necessity of measuring innovative performance through multi-indexes. The number of patents applied, the sale percentage of innovative product and the degree of novelty of product are chosen as the indexes to measure innovative performance. The empirical results indicate that, on one hand, a lot of useful information can not be captured only by a single measurement index, on the other hand, compared to the two conventional measures, namely the number of patents applied and the sale percentage of innovative product, the degree of novelty of product is a more integrative index, but its limitation is relatively subjective. Therefore, the combination of the three indexes might yield more valuably empirical results.(3) For the relationship between patterns of knowledge acquisition and innovative performance, the empirical results reveal that(â… )not all patterns of knowledge acquisition help to significantly increase the innovative performance and(â…¡)the complement of internal and non-internal patterns of knowledge acquisition is more favorable to improve innovative performance.(4) The statistical results indicate that,in addition to significantly influencing the choice of enterprises on patterns of knowledge acquisition, the enterprise size still has direct important impacts on innovative performance and can prominently moderate the relationship between patterns of knowledge acquisition and innovative performance. This study finds that the patterns of knowledge acquisition preferred by the enterprises with different size are different. Moreover, the enterprises with larger size can make use of more patterns of knowledge acquisition. As far as the relationship between enterprise size and innovative performance is concerned, the findings show their relationship is different as the measurement index of innovative performance is different. So we cannot simply say that large enterprises are more innovative than small enterprises or small enterprises are more innovative than large enterprises. The analysis on the moderating effects of enterprise size indicates that the enterprise size can significantly moderate the relationship between patterns of knowledge acquisition and innovative performance.(5) The empirical analysis shows that, besides an innovative culture characteristic, namely"encouragement to participate in, willingness to empower", the other three innovative culture characteristics, namely"encouragement to take risks, tolerance to fail","belief in the importance of innovation"and"willingness to exchange ideas", can not only impose certain impacts on the choice of patterns of knowledge acquisition, but also have significant positive effect on innovative performance and are able to prominently moderate the relationship between patterns of knowledge acquisition and innovative performance. All these results embody the contingency nature of innovative culture and also reflect the importance of innovative culture ideas such as"encouragement to take risks, tolerance to fail","belief in the importance of innovation"and"willingness to exchange ideas".