发明家高管与企业创新

Inventor Executives and Innovation

本文基于纯手工收集整理的中国制造业上市企业内部发明家数据,分析了董事长和总经理的发明家经历对企业创新的具体效应及其影响机制。研究发现,发明家高管对企业研发投入、创新产出、创新效率具有显著的正向促进作用;发明家高管对高科技企业、国有企业、大型企业、成熟企业,以及制度环境较差地区企业创新的正向影响更加明显。考虑到模型可能存在内生性问题,本文进一步采用高管换届分析、面板工具变量估计以及倾向得分匹配等识别策略进行验证,结果均显示发明家高管能显著提高企业创新。机制研究表明,发明家高管通过提供专业知识、提高管理层多元化、减轻管理层短视、向企业内部个体发明家传递激励信号等途径促进企业创新。同时,本文排除创始人高管、过度自信高管等潜在竞争性解释的干扰后的一系列稳健性检验进一步证明文章结论的稳健性和可靠性。本文首次使用中国企业数据实证分析发明家高管对企业创新的影响及其作用机制,弥补了相关领域研究不足,为企业高管与创新研究提供重要补充,对推动"大众创业、万众创新"政策落地提供微观经验支撑。

Using self-collected database of inventor executives in the listed manufacturing firms in China,this study aims to examine the effects of inventor chairman and CEO on corporate innovation and the mechanism involved.The main finding is that,the executive’s invention experience has a significantly positive effect on the firm’s R&D inputs,R&D out put and innovation efficiency.In addition,the positive effect appears to be more apparent in the high-tech enterprises,state-owned enterprises,large-scale enterprises,mature enterprises,and regional enterprises with a relatively poor institutional milieu.Taking into account the possible endogeneity issues in the model,this study further applies other methods like top-executive turnover analysis,instrumental variable and propensity score matching methods.The results all indicate that inventor executives can significantly raise the enterprise’s innovation output.Mechanism analysis shows that the firm’s innovation output can be raised by the inventor executives through their provision of professional knowledge,diversification of management,reduction of management myopia,and the delivery of stimulus signal to individual inventors within enterprises.Meanwhile,this study excludes possible explanations from disturbances such as founder executives and overconfident executives.A series of robustness checks further reveal that the conclusions are robust and reliable.This study,for the first time,contributes to the existing studies of firm executives and innovation using the manufacturing industry database to systematically explore the impact of top executives with invention background on firm innovation,and eventually provides vital micro-level evidence on supporting the implementation of the“Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation”policy.