校企非正式个人联结如何促进企业突破式创新?

How do Informal Interpersonal Ties between Enterprises and Universities Drive Radical Innovation?

大学衍生企业更容易从母体大学获取前沿创新资源,因而更有条件进行突破式创新。但现有研究较多从大学衍生企业与其母体大学正式联结的视角分析衍生企业的创新行为和绩效问题,忽视了非正式个人联结的价值。本研究以155个中国大学衍生企业为样本,探索大学衍生企业与其母体大学之间的非正式个人联结是否以及如何影响其突破式创新。结果发现,校企非正式个人联结对其衍生企业两类隐性知识获取和突破式创新具有正向作用效果;两类隐性知识获取在校企非正式个人联结与衍生企业突破式创新关系中具有部分中介作用;关系对称性在校企非正式个人联结与不同隐性知识获取关系中具有不同权变效果。本研究丰富和拓展了社会网络理论、资源基础理论和资源依赖理论等在大学衍生企业实施突破式创新过程中的运用。

University spin-offs(USOs)are companies created to commercialize knowledge or technology developed in academia.Thus,they have more advantages in spurring radical innovation on account of easily acquiring more innovative resources about frontier science and technology from parent university.However,the extant research tends to pay more attention to analyze the innovative conduct and performance of USOs based on the formal contact between universities and their spin-offs,ignoring the value of informal interpersonal ties between them.Actually,informal interpersonal ties between firms and universities(university ties)enable the firms to access the latest scientific and technological information for improving an industry s R&D novelty and efficiency,deepen the understanding and absorption of new technology as well as information and generate internal trust and external reputation,so better integrating scientific and technological knowledge into the firms radical innovation process and decreasing the uncertainty of developing radical innovation.This paper aims to explore whether and how the informal interpersonal ties between universities and spin-offs have an impact on radical innovation of university spin-offs.Based on social network theory and the knowledge-based view,firms developing informal ties with universities are more likely to gain access to tacit knowledge and resource from the network of relationships and build radical innovation competences.Thus,the study discusses the mediating roles of cognitive and skilled tacit knowledge acquisition in the relationship between the informal interpersonal ties and radical innovation and explores the different mediations of two types of tacit knowledge acquisition.Besides,this study introduces relationship symmetry between universities and their spin-offs and explores the moderating role of relationship symmetry.A high relationship symmetry can provide a good atmosphere of acquiring and learning two types of tacit knowledge through generating trust and reciprocity and knowledge sharing desire in different knowledge owners.To test hypotheses on the above,a sample of 155 USOs was investigated by questionnaire in this study,and the model was tested by theoretical analysis.The empirical findings show that(1)the informal interpersonal ties between universities and spin-offs have significant positive effects on the two types of tacit knowledge acquisition and radical innovation of USOs;(2)two types of tacit knowledge acquisition have a significant positive impact on radical innovation of USOs and partially mediate the main effect of the informal interpersonal ties between universities and spin-offs and radical innovation of USOs;(3)relationship symmetry between universities and their spin-offs plays different moderating roles in the relationships between the informal interpersonal ties and two types of tacit knowledge acquisition of USOs.The findings in this paper have implications for theory.Firstly,this study provides a deeper understanding of how informal ties impact radical innovation and enrich the scope of informal ties with new evidence in the context of China s university spin-offs.Secondly,we reveal the different mechanism of two types of tacit knowledge acquisition mediate the relationship between the informal interpersonal ties and radical innovation of USOs.Finally,this study identifies that relationship symmetry has a different moderating effect on the relationship between the informal interpersonal ties and two types of tacit knowledge acquisition of USOs.In addition,this study also provides important managerial implications.First,managers in university spin-offs should build and maintain closed,frequent and everlasting university ties through developing their personal social networks and utilizing their existing enterprise resources.Second,managers in university spin-offs should choose different measures to facilitate absorption and utilization of two types of tacit knowledge.Finally,managers in university spin-offs should do their best to promote the relationship symmetry between universities and spin-offs.