Research On The Influence Of Entrepreneurship On Firm’s Ambidextrous Innovation

With the acceleration of technological change and intensified global competition,Chinese firms’ long-term reliance on imitation innovation for short-term profits is no longer sustainable.Excessive exploitative innovation has led to a lack of control over core technologies in Chinese firms,which has led to the neck-sticking problem.In this context,ambidextrous innovation strategy has become an inevitable choice for Chinese firms.However,exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation are often in competition for resources.How to enable firms to increase the investment in exploratory innovation activities based on exploitative innovation,and then achieve the ambidexterity of exploratory and exploitative innovations is an important theme in current management practice and theoretical research.Entrepreneurship takes innovation spirit as the core and plays an important role in the practice of firm innovation.At present,innovation is usually regarded as homogeneous in studies on the relationship between entrepreneurship and innovation,and few scholars distinguish between firm innovation activities based on the perspective of ambidexterity,let alone study the differences in the impact of different entrepreneurship on exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation.Based on China’s policy guidance of vastly advocating the development of entrepreneurship,exploring the relationship between entrepreneurship and ambidextrous innovation has important theoretical value and practical significance.Based on entrepreneurial theory,ambidextrous innovation theory,informationbased theory,and dynamic capability theory,this study takes the listed firms in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry from 2012 to 2021 as the research object to thoroughly test the impact of entrepreneurship on firms’ ambidextrous innovation and further tests the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty.The research conclusions are as follows:(1)Technical innovation spirit promotes both exploratory and exploitative innovation,and the impact on exploratory innovation is greater,which is conducive to stimulating firms’ relative exploratory innovation orientation and achieving the ambidexterity of exploratory and exploitative innovations.(2)Nontechnical innovation spirit also promotes both exploratory and exploitative innovation,but the impact on exploitative innovation is greater,and non-technical innovation spirit plays non-significant effect in the impact on the ambidexterity of exploratory and exploitative innovations.(3)Environmental uncertainty reinforces the positive impact of technical innovation spirit on exploratory innovation and the ambidexterity of exploratory and exploitative innovations,and reinforces the positive impact of nontechnical innovation spirit on exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation.The empirical results of this study provide important insights into how firms can promote ambidextrous innovation strategies from the perspective of entrepreneurship:Firstly,we should promote and cultivate entrepreneurship,and pay particular attention to the technical innovation spirit of entrepreneurs.Secondly,firm innovation should walk on two legs and increase the proportion of exploratory innovation activities.Thirdly,firms should respond positively to the uncertain environment and turn competitive pressure into driving forces for innovation.This study extends the related research on the outcome variables of entrepreneurship,divides entrepreneurship into technical innovation and non-technical innovation,and explores the impact of different entrepreneurship on ambidextrous innovation,as well as the difference in the degree of impact on exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation.A micro-level entrepreneurship indicator system is also developed and constructed to provide new ideas for the measurement of entrepreneurship.Therefore,this paper is innovative,but there are still shortcomings:The sample firms involved in a relatively single industry;This study only considers the moderating effect of external environment of firms and does not consider the influence of firms’ characteristics;Possible intermediation mechanisms have not been considered.