The Relationship Research Among Heterogeneous Knowledge Network,Management Innovation And New Product Development Performance

In recent years, more and more companies realized that management innovation is more efficient to help them to improve their performance generally and become competitive than technological innovation. However, many companies only choose knowledge and skills learned from their surrounding “network” as management innovation because of the limited resources and competence. This strategy makes it important to know more about the “network” of companies as well as the knowledge learned form it. Previous reports discussed about the impacts on management innovation from the network density, network size, network centrality, tie strength, structural holes, which only considered network structure and network relationship and emphasized the positive effects benefited from the preponderant position in “network”. Besides “network”, knowledge learned from “network” may have different content properties and also make a difference on management innovation, which has been neglected and will be discussed in this report. We will build up the relationship structure among heterogeneous knowledge network, management innovation and new product development performance based on the different “content” of knowledge: technical knowledge, administrant knowledge and market knowledge. Especially, we will introduce “potential absorptive capacity” and investigate how this variable can regulate the “knowledge- innovation-performance” relationship.We analyzed the questionnaires from innovative companies in Guangdong Province and found the following impressive results. Firstly, both heterogeneous knowledge network and management innovation have positive impacts on new product development performance. Then, management innovation acts as a mediator between heterogeneous knowledge network and new product development performance. In detail, technical knowledge network can promote the new product development performance partly through management innovation, management knowledge network can promote the new product development performance totally through management innovation and market knowledge network can promote the new product development performance directly. Thirdly, potential absorptive capacity can bring out different influence according to different relationship. On one hand, potential absorptive capacity can greatly regulate “management knowledge network-management innovation”, while can’t regulate “technical knowledge network-management innovation” or “market knowledge network-management innovation”. On the other hand, potential absorptive capacity also can influence “management innovation-new product development performance”.The results in our report firstly shed light on the relationship between heterogeneous knowledge network, management innovation and new product development performance and provided theoretical support for companies to utilize different knowledge to improve management innovation and new product development performance.