| With the increasingly fierce global competition,rapid technological changes,and the increasingly complex product innovation caused by multi-technology characteristics of the industry,technological diversification(TD)has become a technology strategy commonly implemented by enterprises.As early as the 1860s and 70s,American enterprises set off a wave of technological diversification.In the 1980s,almost 80%of Japan’s large-scale enterprises had a trend of technological diversification.In the 1990s,there was widespread technological diversification in both large-scale enterprises and innovative small and medium enterprises in the UK.In the past two decades,the degree of technological diversification of Chinese enterprises has also been significantly improved.The direct manifestation is the substantial increase in the number of patents of enterprises in different technical fields.Although the quantity of patents can reflect the level of technological innovation of enterprises to a certain extent,the real quality of patents of Chinese enterprises has always been questioned.For example,the U.S.sanctions in 2018 caused ZTE Corporation to fall into shock.The incident severely exposed the shortcomings of China’s manufacturing industry and deeply revealed the dependence of China’s core technologies on developed countries.The above phenomenon can lead to a series of questions.How does the technological diversification of Chinese enterprises affect the quantity and quality of patents?With the continuous improvement of technological diversification,the innovation activities of enterprises will inevitably undergo corresponding changes.Will these changes affect the long-term sustainable development of enterprises?Firm value is a key indicator to measure the long-term sustainable development of an enterprise.Will technological diversification affect firm value?What kind of transmission mechanism affects firm value?These issues are important issues that Chinese enterprises hope to solve urgently.In response to the above problems,according to the existing theories and related research results,this paper divides the overall technological diversification of the enterprise into related technological diversification(RTD)and unrelated technological diversification(UTD),and divides patent output into patent quantity and patent quality.Focusing on the basic idea of "what kind of relationship exists among technological diversification,patent output,and firm value",this paper conductes an in-depth research on the impact of technological diversification on patent output and firm value,and the corresponding mechanism.Moreover,this paper also discusses the realization path of promoting the technological diversification through the diversification of R&D partners to improve the level of innovation.In order to ensure the smooth development of this research,this paper established a database of listed Chinese manufacturing companies.The data collection sources mainly come from two channels:one is the patent search and analysis system of the State Intellectual Property Office,which provides the inventions of sample companies,such as invention patents and their citing and cited patents;the other is the CSMAR database and Wind database,these two databases provide financial data of sample companies.In order to effectively test the research conclusions,this paper uses descriptive statistical analysis,multiple regression analysis and other data processing methods,and uses fixed effects models,negative binomial regression models,Poisson regression models,two-stage instrumental variable regression models,etc.A series of robustness tests were also carried out in the process.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows:First,this paper analyzes the impact of the related and unrelated technological diversification on the quantity and quality of patents,where the TD,the quantity and quality of innovations are respectively measured by the entropy index,the number of patents and forward references of patents.This paper finds that RTD has an inverse U-shaped effect on both the quantity and quality of patents,whereas UTD increases both the quantity and quality of patents.Moreover,the balance between the related and unrelated technological diversification reduces the inverse U-shaped impact of RTD on the quantity of patents and enhances the positive impact of UTD.Second,this paper analyzes the impact of the quantity and quality of patents on the value of firms.It finds that both the quantity and quality of patents are positively correlated with the value of firms.The value of firms increases by 2.9%when one effective invention patent is added for every￥100 million of assets;the value of firms increases by about 5.9%for each additional citation.Moreover,compared with non-state-owned enterprises,the quantity of patents has no significant positive impact on the value of state-owned enterprises,but the quality of patents has increasingly significant positive impact on the value of state-owned enterprises.The analysis of the mechanism of action shows that the quality of patents increases the value of firms by improving corporate profitability.Third,this paper studies the impact of TD on the value of firms and the mediating effect of the quantity of patents.There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between RTD and the value of firms.There is no significant inverted U-shaped relationship between UTD and the value of firms.The related and unrelated technological diversification both have a significant positive effect on the quantity of patents,but only RTD has a mediating role on the value of firms through the quantity of patents.Environmental uncertainty does not moderate the inverted U-shaped relationship between RTD and the value of firms,but positively moderates the inverted U-shaped relationship between UTD and the value of firms.Fourth,by studying the impact of diversification of R&D partners on patent output and its mechanism of action,this paper explores the realization path of promoting the technological diversification through the diversification of R&D partners to improve the level of innovation.We find that an increase in R&D partner diversity increases both the quantity and quality of patents.Moreover,increased R&D partner diversity improves the quantity and quality of patents through the related and unrelated technological diversification.Furthermore,R&D cooperation experience and environmental uncertainty play a moderating role on the relationship between R&D partner diversity and the quantity and quality of patents.R&D cooperation experience plays a negative moderating role,while the environmental uncertainty plays a positive role.Because the diversification of R&D partners increases the related and unrelated technological diversification,and thereby increases the quantity and quality of patents,the diversification of R&D partners is the source of power for firms to promote the related and unrelated technological diversification,and then increase the patent output of firms.There are three innovations in this paper:First,this paper studies the different effects of the related and unrelated technological diversification on the quantity and quality of patents,and tests the moderating effect of the balance between the related and unrelated technological diversification and the mediating role of firms absorbing external knowledge spillovers,which enriches the existing literature on technological innovation.Second,this paper studies the impact of the related and unrelated technological diversification on the value of firms,and the mediating role of patent output,which makes up for the deficiency of existing literatures.Third,this paper finds that the diversification of R&D partners improves the quantity and quality of patents,and the mediating role of the related and unrelated technological diversification,which shows that firms can promote TD through the diversification of R&D partners,and ultimately improve the innovation level of firms.It provides a new idea for firms to promote TD and improve the quantity and quality of patents. |
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