技术融合对企业利用式与探索式创新绩效的影响

The influence of technology fusion on firm’s exploitative and exploratory innovation performance

摘要:

技术融合促进产业跨界协同形成新的创新网络，但少有文献从技术元素之间的关系探讨不同技术融合模式对企业利用式与探索式创新绩效的影响。从技术元素之间的关系视角，基于我国343家新能源汽车企业2005－2017年新产品数据、专利数据与企业性质的面板数据，通过不同类别IPC分类号构建企业技术知识共现矩阵，采用负二项固定效应回归模型实证检验互补性和替代性技术融合对企业利用式绩效与探索式创新绩效的作用机制。结果表明：当企业偏向采取利用式创新，通过改进已有产品、设计或服务来满足消费者需求时，企业应采取替代性技术融合来提升企业创新绩效；而当企业力求寻找新技术发展轨迹，通过探索式创新来满足新兴顾客或新兴市场需求时，互补性技术融合的积极作用则更加突出，替代性技术融合虽然一开始能赋予原有技术新的附加功能和更强的竞争力，但在后期将不利于探索式创新绩效的进一步提升。企业管理者应通过深入理解企业技术元素之间的关系来更好地开展组织学习和创新活动，通过不同技术融合方式发展不同的技术创新轨道。

Abstract:

Since the beginning of the 21st century, breakthroughs and cross-fertilization in disciplines such as information, biology, new energy, and new materials have laid the groundwork for a new wave of technological revolution and industrial transformation. The permeability and diffusion of technology into various sectors of the economy and society have continued to increase, with major disruptive technological innovations constantly emerging. As a new and decisive factor in industrial development, technology fusion has become a key pathway for enterprises to break through technological constraints, respond to market changes, and achieve innovative development. Particularly in innovative fields like new energy vehicles, where product components involve various knowledge and technologies, whole-vehicle manufacturers as system integrators need to master a large amount of non-core knowledge and technology. They must then recombine it with their core technologies to maintain a competitive edge in the fierce market and achieve sustainable development. However, due to the inherent ambiguity and complexity of fusion phenomena, measuring and analyzing technology fusion has always been a challenge in academic research. There has been little research specifically focusing on quantitatively examining the impact of different technology fusion modes on enterprise innovation. This paper is based on panel data of 343 new energy vehicle enterprises in China from 2005 to 2017, including data on new product development, patents, and enterprise characteristics. From the perspective of the relationship between technological elements, the paper constructs an enterprise technology knowledge co-occurrence matrix using different categories of IPC classification codes. It then employs a negative binomial fixed-effects regression model to empirically study the effects of complementary technology fusion and substitutive technology fusion on enterprise performance in exploitative innovation and exploratory innovation. The research findings indicate that when enterprises lean towards exploitative innovation, seeking to meet consumer demands by improving existing products, designs, or services, they should adopt substitutive technology fusion to enhance their innovation performance. Conversely, when enterprises strive to explore new technological development paths to meet the needs of emerging customers or markets, the positive effects of complementary technology fusion become more prominent. Although substitutive technology fusion may initially endow existing technologies with new functionalities and greater competitiveness, it may hinder the further improvement of exploratory innovation performance in the later stages. Therefore, enterprise managers should deepen their understanding of the relationships between technological elements to better conduct organizational learning and innovation activities. They can develop different technological innovation trajectories through various technology fusion approaches.