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This paper takes the China high- and new-technology enterprise (HNTE) program implemented in 2008 as a quasi-natural experiment. Difference-in-differences (DID) estimate with matching data from the China Industrial Enterprise Database, the China Customs Database and the HNTE Certification Database for 2006–2010 is used to study the impact of HNTE certification on enterprises' export product quality. The results show that, overall, HNTE certification promotes the upgrading of export product quality. Moreover, the improvement of innovation ability brought by HNTE certification is an important channel to promote such upgrades. A series of robustness tests also confirm the above conclusions. In addition, heterogeneity analyses are conducted based on the enterprise size, ownership and trade mode, respectively. The results show that the mechanism by which HNTE certification policy promotes export product quality through the improvement of enterprise innovation ability is more significant in non-SOEs and general trading enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The firm survival risk is essential to intellectual property strategy implementing in China, however only a few studies focus on this problem. The paper investigates the effect of intellectual property rights protection system (IPR) on survival risk. Specifically, we use an event history analysis to track 8486 firms entering the market from the year 2000, and employ computing methods of the time-dependent Cox model. One important finding from this study is that the survival risks of R&D firms can be reduced approximately 22.57% by every additional unit of intellectual property, and the marginal effect raises to 28.33% with the exclusion of the administrative factors. Another important finding is that the relationship between IPR protection and survival risk is affected by R&D revenue. Finally, the survival risk for all those firms with substantive innovation rather than strategic innovation can be greatly affected by IPR system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tries to disentangle between the influence of R&D subsidy and non-R&D subsidy, and explores the mechanism of different subsidies and their combination on R&D input and output of listed companies in China. It is found that both R&D subsidy and non-R&D subsidy can effectively motivate listed companies to increase R&D investment, and moderate non-R&D subsidy in subsidy combination can strengthen the 'incentive effect' of R&D subsidy on enterprise innovation. R&D subsidies can improve the innovation output of listed companies through direct and indirect 'double paths', but non-R&D subsidies have a certain 'masking effect' on the innovation output. Relevant government should control the non-R&D subsidy at the 'medium and low level' as far as possible to realise the 'strengthening effect' of moderate non-R&D subsidy on R&D subsidy in promoting enterprise innovation. The control of subsidy classification should be strengthened to avoid the adverse effects caused by non-R&D subsidies being 'diverted for other purposes'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under limited technological resources, optimising financing channel to R&D investment has important theoretical and practical implications. This paper analyzed the threshold effects of internal financing channels and external financing channels on the R&D investment using 692 manufacturing listed companies' data from 2008 to 2015. And five threshold factors including the debt level, profit level, operational capacity, company's size, and bank loan ratio were used to estimate the threshold effects of different financing channels. The results show that internal financing has a positive threshold effect on R&D investment when the debt level is lower than the threshold value; equity financing is negatively related to R&D investment; debt financing has a significant negative effect on the R&D investment under certain threshold levels; government subsidies promote the R&D investment extremely for the companies with certain size and scale effect. Besides, this paper proposed corresponding suggestions for different threshold values and financing channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This present paper studies the relationship between the industrial development environment (IDE) and the innovation efficiency (IE) of China’s high-tech industry. First, drawing upon insights from research on regional innovation systems and sectoral innovation systems, the paper proposes a definition of the IDE within which China’s high-tech industry exists. Then, by a factorial analysis, three main components reflecting the IDE are obtained: regional development conditions, regional consumption potential, and interactions between innovation actors. Furthermore, the impacts of various facets of the IDE on three kinds of IE are investigated through the DEA-Tobit regression approach. Based on the results, our analysis can provide information for policymakers to create a favourable environment for China’s high-tech industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the way that increasing engagement in international standardisation processes has enabled Chinese firms to become global players in mobile telecommunications technologies and China to become a major influence in the international information and communications technology (ICT) standards arena. From a ‘social shaping of technology’ perspective it examines the development of the third generation (3G) TD-SCDMA (time division synchronous code division multiple access) mobile telephony standard (TD) and the path laid towards the next generation of mobile broadband standards and technologies. The paper highlights the complex interactions between a wide array of players involved, including national and foreign firms, and different sections and levels of the Chinese state. TD's success was by no means predetermined. China eventually adopted a pragmatic approach implementing TD and the two established Western standards. This complex history and interplay between Chinese and foreign players calls into question the idea of national or indigenous technologies for large-scale infrastructures, and highlights the limitations of national strategies in globalised innovation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theory-driven and theory-based studies on innovation in China are relatively scarce. Most innovation studies about Chinese business are based on Chinese policy and government programmes and their results. This special issue ofTechnology AnalysisandStrategic Managementexplores China's indigenous innovation strategy and suggests a research agenda that focuses on Chinese innovation theory building that incorporates China's efforts to move towards an innovation-based economy. Currently, China is developing its indigenous innovation capabilities (The Chinese term is 自主创新, pronounced zizhu chuangxin). We suggest that innovation studies of Chinese business could focus on these indigenous innovation ambitions. In addition to this, it could adopt, and be embedded in a Chinese theory of innovation instead of a traditional Western-centric theory of innovation. Our proposition is that to better understand Chinese indigenous innovation, a new paradigm of Chinese innovation should be developed. We therefore present a research agenda that can be a starting point for the development of such a theory, and present seven papers in this special issue that give content to this idea. Obviously no theory will have a monopoly on exploring Chinese innovation phenomena, but it is interesting to add a Chinese-centric view into the Western-centric scholarly view. We hope that will be one of the contributions of this special issue on innovation in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prolific inventors not only own higher innovation productivity, but also impact other inventors through innovation networks. This paper contributes to existing literatures by differentiating prolific inventors from non-prolific inventors in the network context, and making an empirical analysis of the effect of prolific inventors. We use the patent filing data from the State Intellectual Property Office of China (SIPO) in investigating the effect of prolific inventors on firm innovation. We use the patents filed by 10 largest Information & Communication Technology firms during 1995–2010 and establish the innovation network with patent co-inventing data. The empirical result shows that prolific inventors positively impact their partners who used to co-invent at least one patent with them. Furthermore, prolific inventors positively impact inventors who do not have a close contact with them. The closer the inventors are to prolific inventors, the more patents they produce. Members are thereby more likely to gather around prolific inventors and formulate intensive clusters. In networks centered by prolific inventors, useful knowledge outweighs redundant knowledge, and high clustering that facilitates knowledge flow is proved to be beneficial; while in networks without prolific inventors, high clustering may not be beneficial as there are less inventors holding advanced knowledge. Policy implications are discussed at the end of this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses panel data between 2000 and 2010 to explore how firm ownership and regional industrial structures contribute to regional innovation performance in Chinese provinces. Specifically, we explore how the extent of specialisation and diversification in regional industrial structures at the province level fosters both Marshall–Arrow–Romer and Jacobs spillovers, as well as how foreign and state ownership influence regional innovation. We find: (i) China's regional innovation systems benefit from Jacobs but not MAR externalities, with the former spurring higher quality innovation in the form of increased invention patenting; (ii) state-owned enterprises and foreign-invested enterprises advance local innovation, with the latter again fostering higher quality innovation; and (iii) a convergence towards a combination of low specialisation and high diversity in provincial industrial structure is taking place between China's more developed inland coastal provinces and less developed inland provinces. Implications and suggestions for policy-making and future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to describe the ways in which open search strategies (i.e. open search breadth and open search depth) align with firms’ radical and incremental innovation. By analysing survey data collected from 162 firms in Chinese high-tech markets, we found that a firm pursuing radical innovation benefits more from open search breadth than open search depth to achieve its performance goals; in contrast, a firm processing incremental innovation benefits more from open search depth than open search breadth to improve its performance. Based on these results, managers should pay attention to the fit between open search strategies and radical/incremental innovation. This study not only contributes to the studies of search strategies by identifying the parallel relationship of open search strategies and two types of innovation, but also enriches the theory of open innovation with an empirical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of different cooperation networks upon their cooperative innovation effect (CIE) and innovation performance, and examined the relationship between the CIE and the innovation performance of firms. Some interesting findings appear. First, the findings indicate that there are significant and positive relationships between the seven cooperation networks and the CIE of firms, of which the internal cooperation network has the most significant and positive impact on their CIE. Second, the findings also reveal that there are significant and positive relationships between the six cooperation networks, except firm–government cooperation (FGC) and the innovation performance of firms. Third, contrary to some studies from developed countries, the results reveal that FGC does not demonstrate any significant impact on the innovation performance of firms. These results enrich and supplement the current understanding of the relationships between cooperation networks and innovation performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The low-cost carrier (LCC) business model represents a strategic innovation that has had a significant impact on the dynamics of the commercial aviation industry in North America, Europe and increasingly Asia. This paper considers the adoption of the LCC model in China and discusses the effect of the particularities of the Chinese political, economic and regulatory context on the rate and character of adoption. We conclude by considering what the experience of the three companies that have adopted the LCC model can tell us about the prospects for the wider adoption of this model in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to explore the effects of industrial cluster on innovation capacity, and second, to study the impact of external resources on firms' innovation capacity especially under Chinese regional economic policy. This is a critical subject that lacks sufficient analysis. Through years of investment and effort, several IT industrial clusters have developed in China with Shanghai, Kunshan, Shenzhen and Dongguan the better-known examples. These IT industrial clusters were chosen for an empirical study on the disparities in China's innovation capacity. All of the innovation capacity determinants at these four IT industrial clusters were different. It was confirmed that the regional dimension of Chinese economic policy affects firms' innovation capacity in the industrial cluster. The results also show whether the regional policy differences will moderate the cluster effect on innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its economic reform began in 1979 China's economy has grown rapidly but its dynamism has not been shared by the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) at its core. Although some progress has been made, a large proportion of SOEs remain inefficient and uncompetitive, failing to exploit their advantages in scale, experience and resources. In contrast there has been rapid growth first of the collective and township enterprises, and then of the private sector, now the largest ownership type. However, private businesses continue to be handicapped by poor access to finance and other resources. These have however been made freely available to firms with only a minority state shareholding and otherwise owned by private shareholders and employees. This paper, focussing on the telecoms manufacturing sector, compares minority-state-owned hybrids favourably with other ownership types and argues that in the Chinese setting they can and should play a key role in future development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we use industry level panel data regression models to examine the technology spillovers from large- and medium-sized enterprises (LMEs) into non-LMEs, as well as from state-owned LMEs into state-owned enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises, in Chinese manufacturing industries. Our study reveals that technological developments in LMEs have a technology spillover effect upon non-LMEs, and state-owned LMEs have a strong technology spillover effect upon both state-owned and non-state-owned enterprises in manufacturing industries with below average technological capital intensity. As the agents of knowledge diffusion and providers of technological public goods, state-owned LMEs have played a critical role in bridging the technology gap between advanced technologies brought in by foreign funded enterprises and the technological base of other local firms, and thus have facilitated the assimilation and adaptation of advanced foreign technologies in the development of the Chinese manufacturing industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]