The Research On Knowledge Sharing Mechanisms Facing Distributed Innovation

Due to the globalization of economy, knowledge based economy has become the main stream of development featuring the knowledge as an independent productive factor leading other factors. As enterprises facing the global competition for knowledge factor, knowledge has become the first pushing power for sustainable development of enterprises. Under such circumstances, many leading enterprises have been exploring and taking a brand new innovation model, namely Distributed Innovation, featuring the advanced knowledge management base so as to seeking global configuration of innovation resources and lowering the cost and risk for competitive advantage. However, contrast to successful experiences of these leading enterprises, Chinese enterprises have encountered Distributed Innovation Black box, during the course of taking technical innovation international strategies to combine global innovation resources, namely never really knowing how to construct sustainable competitive advantage by way of building knowledge base through Distributed Innovation. So there will be strategic meaning of reality and theoretic value for this thesis to study core problems such as how to make use of Distributed Innovation to instruct Chinese enterprises seeking global innovation resources and using correct knowledge sharing mechanism to attaining core technologies.However, enterprises Distributed Innovation is still a new research field concerning its loosen theoretic research and less systematic theoretic structure. Most researches have been covering many fields such as Open Innovation, Innovation Network, Integrated Innovation, Global Product Development, Virtual Team, Outsourcing and Multiple Outsourcing. There are still a few researches to study the connotation of enterprises Distributed Innovation and its important mechanism for attaining knowledge. As a result, there is no way to find satisfactory solutions from existing literatures for Distributed Innovation dilemmas such as its limitation of time and space, absence of interactive and social opportunities, credit and commitment, and lowered collaboration becoming obstacles of knowledge sharing. There is an urgent demand to construct theoretic system of Distributed Innovation and its management model in terms of theory and reality, so as to perfect technical innovation theory and instruct industries. Based on these research circumstances and research object, this thesis proposed three research problems through literature review and enterprises field survey, namely (1) what are elements of Distributed Innovation? How do they affect enterprises innovation performance? (2) What knowledge sharing mechanisms during the course of enterprises Distributed Innovation? (3) How can enterprises conduct Distributed Innovation strategy based on knowledge sharing?Based on the massive literature review of Distributed Innovation and knowledge management, organization study and social network analysis, this thesis takes explorative case analysis of three typical Chinese Distributed Innovation projects and induces an initial concept model of three elements of Distributed Innovation and its knowledge sharing mechanism. Then it further constructs theoretic model of relation between such elements and knowledge sharing and innovation performance resulting in correspondent hypothesis. After massive questionnaires survey and Structural Equation Model (SEM) programming, these hypotheses have been validated. Finally, it provides correspondent management solutions for Chinese enterprises to carry out knowledge sharing mechanisms during the course of DI based on above validating results.The outline and conclusion of this thesis is as following:Firstly, the dispelling of DI elements and its impact to enterprises innovation performance. Based on the summary of existing DI theory researches, spatially those from CRIC and MIT, it initially defines the connotation, motivation, management challenges and its relation with innovation performance. Through three explorative cases analysis, the thesis dispels DI into three elements as distributed structure, distributed perceive and distributed collaboration. Distributed structure includes personnel dispersion and project module. Distributed perceive includes credit, distributed leadership and perceive similarity. Distributed collaboration includes collaborative technologies and innovation incentives. Then the thesis constructs the measurement questions and carries out massive questionnaire survey. It has validated the positive relation between three distribute elements and innovation performance, as to answer the first research question.Secondary, based on the literature review concerning the definition, obstacle, ordinary model, new trend and relation with DI of knowledge sharing, and three explorative cases analysis, the thesis creatively imports Intellectual Property (IP) as the one part of DI knowledge sharing mechanism, along with other two ordinary parts, namely file sharing and learning sharing. This breaks the routine of traditional innovation and makes DI a more perfect theory in terms of its three knowledge sharing mechanism. After SEM modeling and programming, the thesis has validated the working way of three knowledge sharing mechanisms during DI course and its impact to innovation performance. The results has proved three knowledge sharing mechanisms positively affect the innovation performance, but there are rather complicated impacts of DI elements to three knowledge sharing mechanisms, namely contrasts to small positive impact of distributed structure to file sharing and IP sharing , its impact to personnel learning sharing is negative. However, the impacts of distributed perceive and distributed collaboration to three knowledge sharing mechanisms are all positive with different degrees. This result meets the reality of enterprises filed survey, namely merely dispersing personnel and modeling technologies or projects cannot lead to the automatic up of innovation performance, other DI elements playing rather important part during knowledge sharing. As for the together impact of DI and knowledge sharing mechanisms to the innovation performance, the thesis finds the similar results as the way of distributed structure still less positive. All these results have answered the second research question.Thirdly, the correspondent management resolutions for DI knowledge sharing mechanisms. Based on the above theoretic study and SEM modeling and programming, the thesis explores the correspondent resolutions for promoting enterprises DI knowledge sharing mechanisms through the angle of innovation management, proposing that enterprises must carry out knowledge sharing mechanism based on the dynamic combination of DI elements. As for distributed structure, enterprises must optimize the configuration of project staffs and take modeling strategy. As for distributed perceive, enterprises must build credit between staffs, carry out distributed leadership and narrow the knowledge distance between staffs. As for distributed collaboration, enterprises must deploy basic IT supporting system and professional tools system, as well as construct operation mechanism, transforming mechanism, performance mechanism and award mechanism of knowledge sharing. This answers the third research question.In conclusion, the theoretic research and validate analysis of this thesis have enriched and perfect the enterprises proposed by foreign scholars, furthermore, it's more systematic and operative for enterprises to carry out DI by way of knowledge sharing mechanisms. As a result, it provides new and realistic strategic view and way for Chinese enterprises to combine global innovation resources, acquire key and core technological knowledge, and build sustainable competitive advantage.