Institutional Environment Response Strategies Of Chinese Independent Technology Innovation

SCDMA is Chinese independent innovation wireless technology developed by Beijing Xinwei Inc. Based on institutional theory, the paper explores the strategies of response of SCDMA technology development to intensely changing institutional environments persisting in its innovation and commericialization process (1995-2009).The conclusions are as follows:(1) The features of the institutional environment, as well as the response strategy of SCDMA during its development process have been explored in details. The exploration is based on four stages:start-up and exploration, block-up and thinking, positioning and development, expansion and transformation. At the first stage, as the reaction to the rapid growth of China telecommunications market, the compliant strategy was crafted, in which SCDMA was regarded as the supplement of the fixed-line telephone, and this made the first step towards its market occupation. At the second stage, facing restructuring of Chinese telecommunications industry twice, the innovators of SCDMA adopted control strategy, changing its target market and focusing on the private networks. At the third stage, as the response to the "village to village telecommunications" project launched by the Ministry of Information Industry, the compliant strategy was adopted, in which the 400M SCDMA system was developed for the rural telecommunications. At the fourth stage, Targetting the operators with full-service provision after the fourth industry restructuring, the innovators of SCDMA took control strategy again and put business emphasis on the narrowband voice, low-speed data, and broadband data equipment.(2) Confronting with different institutional environments, the innovators adopt different response strategies. Compared with other studies, this thesis adopts a institutional theory framework to analyze the development process of SCDMA technology. Analyzing different environments at different stages and the corresponding response strategies, this thesis has obtained the conclusions that (a) When the institutional environment is favorable to the development of enterprise, compliant strategy is used; (b) When the institutional environment is unfavorable to the development of enterprise, domain or aim is changed to protect the interest of the enterprise. By now, the studies about the independent innovation technology are almost limited to analyzing the development process. This thesis breaks through the limit to explore different strategies corresponding to different institutional environments.(3) At present, the influence of the market environment to the technology innovation is extensively studied, while this thesis takes account of both the institutional environment and the competition between technical products, which definitely affect the relationship between the institutional environment and the response strategy. The institutional environment is most important to the enterprise. When the pressure of institution is high, the enterprise tends to choose compliant strategy to maintain the normal operation without considering the competition ability. When the pressure of institution is low, the enterprise takes different response to consider the influence of other products, according to advantages and disadvantages of itself.(4) In the initial state, independent innovation technology enterprise is weak adaptive to the institutional environment, and needs political support with certain tendency, because independent innovation technology requests large amount of people and material, while the output in this period usually cannot maintain the normal operation. Independent innovation technology has weak competition ability comparing with other technical products. So, the political support with certain tendency is necessary for the initial state. Compared to other studies, this thesis analyzes the particularity and necessary of the development and gives reasonable development proposals.