公司创业投资与企业技术创新绩效——基于实物期权视角的研究

Corporate Venture Capital and Technological Innovation Performance from a Real Option Perspective

由于内部创新效率较低,成熟企业难以像创业企业那样灵活应对外部环境的变化。随着环境不确定性程度的增加,公司创业投资成为成熟企业从创业企业获取创新资源的重要战略手段,并在实践中迅速兴起。本文基于实物期权理论,运用2001—2014年间376家参与公司创业投资活动的沪深上市公司的数据进行了实证分析,结果表明:公司创业投资数量与投资企业的技术创新绩效之间存在着显著的倒U形关系;投资企业面临的环境不确定性和自身的内部创新投入对于上述关系均具有显著的正向调节作用。本文为公司创业投资实物期权属性对投资企业创新绩效的影响提供了直接的实证证据,揭示了公司创业投资获得的外部创新资源与企业内部创新投入之间的互补效应,丰富了公司创业投资和实物期权等方面的研究。

Compared with new ventures, established firms are difficult to flexibly respond to external environment changes because of their low efficiency in internal innovation activities. With increasing environment uncertainty, the trajectory of technology innovation becomes more and more unpredictable, and corporate venture capital（CVC）has become an important strategic method to incumbents for acquiring innovation resources from new ventures, and rises rapidly in practice. CVC could help incumbents to configure technology real options more effectively through investing a variety of new ventures, thereby enabling them to explore innovation opportunities in much more wide areas. Researches have provided considerable empirical evidence in the positive effect of CVC investment on incumbents＇ innovation performance, but there still lacks direct evidence in the effects of CVC real option attributes on investor firms＇ technological innovation performance. Therefore, we carry out an empirical research based on real options and organizational learning theories to answer following questions： first, could CVC investment improve investor firms＇ technological innovation performance under higher uncertain environment？ second, could internal innovation input enhance the positive effect of CVC investment on investor firms＇ technological innovation performance？ We employ the data of 376 listed firms from Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets which have made CVC investment from 2001 to 2014, and analyze them with negative binomial regressions. The results indicate that： （1）there is a significant inverted U-shaped relationship between the number of CVC investment and investor firms＇ technological innovation performance; （2）environment uncertainty has a significant positive moderating effect on the relationship between CVC investment and investor firms＇ technological innovation performance; （3）the internal technology innovation input also has a significant positive moderating effect on the relationship between CVC investment and investor firms＇ technological innovation performance. Our further analysis of moderating effect shows that, under high environment uncertainty or high level of intemal innovation input, the apex of inverted U-shaped curve shifts to right, and the curve becomes steeper, confirming our hypotheses. We also have ran following robust checks. First, we replace the number of three types of patents with the number of invention patents as the dependent variable, as invention is usually more innovative compared with utility model and appearance design. The results are similar to former regressions. Second, considering that the time lag effect of CVC investment on technology innovation might vary with temporal changes, we replace the dependent variable with 2, 3, and 4 years lag patent numbers respectively, and get similar results too. This paper might contribute to the fields of CVC research and real option theory in following issues： firstly, it provides direct empirical evidence for the relationship between CVC＇s real option attributes and investor firms＇ technological innovation performance. In terms of the relationship between CVC＇s real option attributes and investor firms＇ innovation performance, there are many theoretical analyses but little direct empirical evidence. This paper provides direct empirical evidence with the data drawn from China＇s listed companies. Secondly, it reveals the complementation effect between external innovation resources acquired from CVC investment and firms＇ internal resources input in technological innovation. This finding also indicates that within low innovation input group, the increase in the number of CVC investment actually suppresses investor firms＇ innovation performance. It shows that the value of real options depends on not only extemal factors such as environment uncertainty and investment irreversibility, but also the support from firm internal related resources. However, our research also has limitations： first, we use technology human resources to measure technological innovation input because many listed firms do not disclose R＆D expenditures. Second, the value of technological innovation depends on not only its technological advancement, but also the extent to which a firm could successfully commercialize it. Future researches may attain new knowledge through using new commercialized products/services to measure technological innovation performance.