效率还是效果:复杂环境下企业创新的权衡

Efficiency versus Effectiveness: A Trade-off of Firm Innovation under the Complex Environments

追求效率还是追求效果,一直是企业创新需要面对的重要权衡。本文利用来自世界银行的制造企业调查数据,采用整体性研究视角,借助Q CA分析方法探讨了多重、复杂的制度和市场环境下企业在技术来源和产品创新层面的策略选择,回应了以往研究有关创新效率与创新效果的争论,证实了因果关系的组合性、等价性与非对称性推论。研究发现,首先,契约制度是企业获取创新租金、释放企业家精神的重要保障。其次,侧重效果而非效率的创新战略,更有助于企业应对激烈甚至恶劣的市场竞争,进而获得优异绩效。最后,尽管存在目标冲突和资源竞争,效率和效果战略可以兼得,但这取决于特定的情境。相对宽松的市场环境更有助于企业同时实施和整合这两种战略。研究结果有助于解释以往研究结论的不一致,而且有助于指导制造企业正确地选择创新战略,有效地平衡创新效率和创新效果。

Innovation has played a critical role in driving manufacturing transition from traditional price competition into the new creation of high value. How to address the trade-off between efficiency and effectiveness has been a critical issue for manufacturing innovation. Efficiency-based innovation strategies focus on the speed and cost saving of new product or technology development, thereby achieving first-mover and low-cost advantages. Comparatively, effectiveness-based innovation strategies focus on the innovativeness of new product or technology, emphasizing the uniqueness from competitors. The seemingly contradictory objectives and limited resources force most firms to seriously balance the two different typologies of strategies. However, the two issues remain unaddressed in prior studies. First, the findings of prior studies are mixed. Some studies emphasize the advantages of efficiency-based innovation strategies, while others emphasize the advantages of effectiveness. Second, the prior studies focus on the western settings, while few attention has been paid to the emerging markets such as China.Accordingly, drawing upon the survey data from the World Bank, this study employs the approach of QCA and investigates the strategic choice of technology sourcing and product innovation under the complex institutional and market environments of China, thereby addressing the debates of innovation efficiency and effectiveness. The findings provide the empirical evidence to support the propositions contending that causal relationships have the characteristics of combination, equifinality, and asymmetry. Generally, this study concludes several findings. First, contracting institutions play the fundamental base in protecting innovation rents and motivating firm entrepreneurship. Second, innovation strategies emphasizing effectiveness but not efficiency enable firms to confront fierce or even unfair competitions, and then to achieve superior performance. Third, the two conflicting strategies, i.e., efficiency and effectiveness, could be integrated under the specific environments. This study enables us to resolve the inconsistencies among prior studies, and it also provides valuable suggestions for manufacturing firms to pursue the right innovation approach and balance the efficiency and effectiveness, thereby transitioning into the high-value manufacturing.