从渐进式创新到颠覆式创新:一个技术突破的机制

From Increamental Innovation to Disruptive Innovation:A Mechanism of Technological Breakthrough

利用马克思主义辩证法,本文提出并检验了一个独特的创新与技术变迁理论。在这个理论中,市场与企业的相互作用形成了两种不同的创新模式:在市场稳定时期,企业利用和改进现有的技术范式,连续的渐进式创新成为技术进步的源泉,同时,也造成了企业在技术上的路径依赖;在市场不稳定时期,企业间的矛盾和动态竞争破坏了现有的技术范式,造成了市场的不确定性,进而推动了企业不连续的颠覆式创新和技术范式的革命。因此,技术进步是在这两种创新模式的循环交替中实现的,而市场不稳定时期的矛盾与创造性破坏的动态竞争是企业从路径依赖的渐进式创新向颠覆式创新转变的关键驱动力量。这个理论突破了新古典经济学、演化经济学和熊彼特理论在分析创新问题时的局限,进而提供了一个更具包容性和一般性的马克思主义创新与技术变迁理论。

Using Marx’s dialectics,this paper presents and tests a unique theory of innovation and technological change.In this theory,the interactions between market and firms lead to two different innovation modes:during the stable period of a market,firms utilize and improve the existing technological paradigms.Continuous incremental innovation has become the source of technological progress,and at the same time,it has also led to the path dependence of firms on technology.In the period of market instability,the contradiction and dynamic competition between firms destroy the existing technology paradigms and cause the market uncertainty,which in turn drives the revolution of discontinuous disruptive innovation and technological paradigms.Therefore,the technological progress is realized in the alternation of these two innovation modes,and the contradiction in the unstable market period and the dynamic competition of creative destruction are the key driving forces for firms to change from path dependence to disruptive innovation.This theory breaks through the limitations of neoclassical economics,evolutionary economics and Schumpeter’s theory in their analysis of innovation,then it provides us with a more inclusive and general Marxist theory of innovation and technological change.