The Impact Of Indusrty-University-Research Institution Collaboration Network Strucure On Firm Innovation Performance

In order to share resources, attain complementary capability, and enhance innovation performance, more and more firms have collaborated with other firm, university and research institutions during the process of research and development (R&D). With the development of industry-university-research institution collaboration (I-U-R collaboration), the form of collaboration gradually evolved into network form. The nature of I-U-R collaboration network is an inter-organization knowledge network, which is hierarchical and consist of firm, university and research institutions. The I-U-R collaboration network constitutes a conduit that channels the communication, transferring, combination and sharing of information and knowledge. The structure of network influences the dynamics of knowledge communication, transferring, sharing and combination, further more greatly influences firm innovation performance. Therefore, this paper deep into the impact of I-U-R collaboration network structure on firm innovation performance, can contribute to policy makers when making innovation polices for enhance technology level and competency of firms.Information and Communication Technology (ICT) firms in China were selected as our sample, patent data during 1996-2010 were gathered using patent database of Chinese State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO). We constructed I-U-R patent collaboration network and measured the network structure. And we examined the impact of the collaboration network structure on firm innovation performance with the help of panel negative binominal regression model.This paper came to the following conclusions:(1) Clustering coefficient and reach, the indicator of knowledge transfer efficiency, have significant positive effect on firm innovation performance. However, the interaction effect of clustering coefficient and reach is negative. (2) The small world character of collaboration network have U shaped influence on firm innovation. (3) The breadth of collaboration have U shaped influence on both one-year and two-year lag firm innovation performance. The depth of collaboration have U shaped influence on one year lag firm innovation performance, but have negative influence on two year lag firm innovation performance. According to the results above, we proposed some advices to firms and government, in order to further promote the development of ICT industry in China.