Research On The Effect Of External Collaboration In Open Innovation On Innovation Performance Of Sems

Innovation is the first driving force for social development and a key factor in maintaining the sustainable growth of national economy,and it plays an important role in economic growth and social progress.Small and middle-sized enterprises(SMEs)is an important power to promote innovation,and the improvement of SMEs’ innovation capacity and innovation performance has attracted much attention.However,the innovation of SMEs is increasingly difficult.The main reasons for this phenomenon include the limitation of their knowledge and ability,the improvement of technological complexity,the shortening of the product life cycle,the acceleration of knowledge updating,and the intensification of market competition in recent years.It is difficult for SMEs to improve their innovation performance and win in the fierce market competition by only relying on internal resources and carrying out “closed-door” innovation.In this circumstance,SMEs are gradually turning to “open innovation” development strategy and participating in external collaboration actively.Through external collaboration,they can acquire critical knowledge and resources,reduce the costs and uncertainty of innovation,and then improve their innovation performance.Although more and more SMEs hope to improve their innovation performance through external collaboration,the effect of external collaboration is unsatisfied.Also,academia has little known about the effect of external collaboration on innovation performance of SMEs.In the existing researches on the effect of external collaboration on innovation performance,little attention has been paid to SMEs.The research on the effect mechanism between external collaboration and innovation performance is insufficient,and the research perspective is relatively single.Besides,few scholars have explored the situational factors which may affect the relationship between external collaboration and SMEs’ innovation performance.Based on the above reality and theoretical background,this study attempts to explore the effect mechanism of external collaboration on the innovation performance of SMEs from the multi-dimensional and multi-perspectives.To have a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between external collaboration in open innovation and SMEs’ innovation performance,a theoretical model of the influence of external collaboration on SMEs’ innovation performance under multi-dimensional conditions is constructed.According to whether the external collaboration is based on contract,this study classifies the external collaboration of SMEs into formal external collaboration and informal external collaboration,and explores the effects of formal and informal external collaboration on SMEs’ innovation performance respectively.Besides,this study also explores the mediating mechanism of absorption capacity and the moderating mechanism of knowledge heterogeneity from the perspective of enterprise level.Based on the questionnaire data of manufacturing SMEs,the empirical analysis finds that: both formal and informal external collaboration have significant positive effects on SMEs’ innovation performance,and informal external collaboration plays a greater role in promoting SMEs’ innovation performance;Absorption capacity plays a partial mediating role in the relationships between formal and informal external collaboration and SMEs’ innovation performance;The internal enterprise knowledge heterogeneity positively moderates the relationships between formal and informal external collaboration and SMEs’ innovation performance,while the external enterprise knowledge heterogeneity does not play significant role in the above relationships.Based on the classification of formal and informal external collaboration,this study further enriches the theoretical model of formal and informal external collaboration and SMEs’ innovation performance from the perspectives of entrepreneurs and external environment level perspective.It explores the moderating role of managers’ entrepreneurial orientation and organizational legitimacy in the relationships between formal and informal external collaboration and SMEs’ innovation performance.The results show that the managers’ entrepreneurial orientation does not have moderating effect on formal external collaboration-SMEs’ innovation performance relationship,but it has a positive moderating effect on informal external collaboration-SMEs’ innovation performance relationship;Organizational legitimacy has significant positive moderating effects on the relationships between formal and informal external collaboration and SMEs’ innovation performance.According to the different ways to acquire external resources,this study classifies the SMEs’ external collaboration into two dimensions: external collaboration breadth and depth.This study builds the theoretical model of how the external collaboration breadth and depth affect the SMEs’ innovation performance,and then explores the influencing mechanism between external collaboration breadth and depth and innovation performance of SMEs.Moreover,it explores the mediating and moderating role of the potential and realized absorptive capacity,as well as the moderating role of government institutional support.Through empirical research,we find that the breadth and depth of external collaboration are helpful to the improvement of SMEs’ innovation performance,and the external collaboration depth plays a greater role in promoting the improvement of SMEs’ innovation performance.Realized absorptive capacity partly mediates the relationships between breadth and depth of external collaboration and SMEs’ innovation performance.Potential absorptive capacity and government institutional support have positive moderating effects on the relationships between the external collaboration breadth and SMEs’ innovation performance,but their moderating effects on the relationship between external collaboration depth and SMEs’ innovation performance are not significant.According to the different types of external partners,this study divides external collaboration into firm-firm collaboration and firm-university collaboration,and constructs theoretical model of how the firm-firm collaboration and firm-university collaboration affect SMEs’ innovation performance.This study explores the influencing mechanism between firm-firm collaboration,firm-university collaboration,and SMEs’ innovation performance,and then explores the moderating effects of managers’ entrepreneurial orientation and collaboration experience on the above relationships.Based on the questionnaire data of manufacturing SMEs,the empirical analysis shows that firm-firm collaboration and firm-university collaboration have positive effects on the SMEs’ innovation performance,and firm-firm collaboration has a greater effect on SMEs’ innovation performance.Managers’ entrepreneurial orientation positively moderates the relationships between firm-firm collaboration,firm-university collaboration,and SMEs’ innovation performance.Collaboration experience positively moderates the relationship between firm-firm collaboration and SMEs’ innovation performance but has no significant effect on the relationship between firm-university collaboration and SMEs’ innovation performance.Given the limitation in the current research on the effect of external collaboration on the SMEs’ innovation performance,this study deeply explores the effect mechanism of external collaboration on the SMEs’ innovation performance from the multi-dimensional and multi-perspectives.Theoretically,this paper further expands the theoretical research in the field of open innovation,reveals the influence mechanism between external collaboration and SMEs’ innovation performance in a more comprehensive and in-depth way,and provides a new research perspective for the research on the relationship between external collaboration and SMEs’ innovation performance.In practice,this study provides guidance for SMEs to implement open innovation and external collaboration activities,and provides practical guidance for SMEs to improve their innovation performance through external collaboration.