The Mechanism Of Partner Heterogeneity Affecting Innovative Performance In Open Innovation

Open innovation is an important developing direction for the innovation management theory and practice, which provides a completely novel model for firms to effectively utilize and integrate external innovation resources and improve their innovation performance. However, existing researches on open innovation found an inverted U-shaped relationship between openness and innovation performance. Because of searching costs and technology spillover, a high level of openness is not conducive to innovation performance. Therefore, firms need to keep a moderate level of openness and the benefit from open innovation is limited.We believe that the key of resolving this problem is partner heterogeneity. The concept of openness discussed the effect of ’quantity’ of external partners on innovation performance, rather ignored the important role of the ’quality’ of partners in open innovation. With the increasing openness, knowledge from homogeneity partner has overlap. Firms paid costs to acquire knowledge, but they or other partners may have already had this knowledge. Addition, because of the similarity of technology background, industry background and products, the technology spillover may occur easily between homogeneous partners. Therefore, researches on open innovation must pay more attention to partner heterogeneity.In this context, we therefore center our research on the core issue of’The Mechanism of Partner Heterogeneity Affecting Innovative Performance’based on resource-based view, organizational learning theory and transaction cost theory. Specifically, our research explores the following questions from the shallower to the deeper:(1) what is the connotation and dimensions of partner heterogeneity?(2) what kind of relationship is between partner heterogeneity and firm innovative performance?(3) how does the effect of partner heterogeneity on innovation performance with environmental turbulence?(4) what are the mechanism of partner heterogeneity impacting on innovative performance?All around these above issues, this article comprehensively utilizes theoretical research, exploratory case analysis, hierarchical regression analysis and structural equation modeling and other research methods, through combination of qualitative and quantitative research, and mainly drives to the following conclusions:(1) Partner heterogeneity refers to the differentiation and diversification of partners in knowledge, skills, abilities and some other aspects in open innovation. Combining with theoretical interpretation and case explanation, this research divides partner heterogeneity into three dimensions including organizational heterogeneity, industry heterogeneity and national heterogeneity. Also, based on Blau index, we propose a scientific method for measurement of partner heterogeneity, which lays a solid foundation for subsequent empirical researches.(2) Partner heterogeneity has a positive influence on innovative performance. Through the questionnaire survey and large-sample empirical research on217manufacturing firms, we find that partner organizational heterogeneity, industry heterogeneity and national heterogeneity all have a significant role in promoting innovation performance. Specifically, despite partner heterogeneity requires firms to pay higher searching and management costs in open innovation, but the heterogeneous innovative resources of partners and the promotion to learning ability of firms in the cooperation process can significantly improve the innovation performance.(3) The effect of partner heterogeneity on innovation performance is influenced by environmental turbulence. The results show that technology turbulence positively and significantly impact the relationship between organizational heterogeneity and innovation performance, and also between national heterogeneity and innovation performance. Market turbulence also plays a positive moderate role in relationship between national heterogeneity and innovation performance. However, technology turbulence and market turbulence do not significant affect the relationship between industry heterogeneity and innovation performance. The results show that in a circumstance that technology develops and changes rapidly, innovative cooperation with knowledge partners and international counterparts can moderate the adverse effects of technology instability and increase access to cutting-edge knowledge and advanced technology; in a circumstance that market develops and changes rapidly, international innovative cooperation can open up more markets and opportunities for firms.(4) Organizational learning capability plays a significant intermediary role in relevance between partner heterogeneity and innovation performance. First, the results show that organizational heterogeneity has indirect and positive impact on firm’s innovation performance through the mediating role of exploratory learning and exploitative learning. Second, national heterogeneity has direct and positive impact on firm’s innovation performance, and also has indirect and positive effect on innovation performance through the mediating role of exploratory learning and exploitative learning; Finally, industry heterogeneity has direct and positive impact on firm’s innovation performance, but has indirect and positive effect on innovation performance only through the mediating role of exploratory learning.These above conclusions have improved the understanding of the mechanism of how partner heterogeneity affects innovation performance and endowed this research some exploration significance. Overall, this study deepens and expands in the following three aspects:(1) A beneficial summary and refining of the conception of partner heterogeneity. Through rigorous theoretical analysis, our research has proposed the connotation and concept of partner heterogeneity in open innovation, which provides a reliable measurement tool for follow-up studies and lays a solid foundation for quantitative study of partner heterogeneity. In addition, existing studies have not reached a consensus on dividing the dimensions of partner heterogeneity. Based on relevant literature, this study divides partner heterogeneity in open innovation into three constituent dimensions including organizational heterogeneity, industry heterogeneity and national heterogeneity, which makes a favorable exploration of partner heterogeneity theory in open innovation.(2) Expansion of the new idea that partner heterogeneity promotes firm innovation. The problem what kind of impact different dimensions of partner heterogeneity will produce on innovation performance is critical to business decision makers in open innovation. However, existing studies have not conducted systematic research on this problem. This research takes Chinese manufacturing firms as study samples, examines effects of organizational heterogeneity, industry heterogeneity and national heterogeneity on innovation performance through empirical methods, and systematically studies the mechanisms how partner heterogeneity affects innovation performance under different external environmental turbulences. This is conducive to in-depth understanding of mechanism of partner heterogeneity impacting innovation performance and expansion of open innovation.(3) Organizational learning theory provides a new perspective for open innovation. This study has further integrated basic perspectives of organizational learning based on previous resource-based view and transaction cost theory emphasizing the long-term effect of partner heterogeneity on innovative performance, and has further enriched the perspectives of partner heterogeneity theoretical research in open innovation, which provides a new perspective and research paths to the selection of external partner in open innovation.