客户企业创新驱动了上游企业探索式创新吗?——创新的反向传导效应研究

Does the Innovation of Customer Enterprises Drive the Exploratory Innovation of Upstream Enterprises?A Study on the Reverse Transmission Effect of Innovation

供应链网络中,下游客户企业和上游供应商的创新行为相互关联。本文通过匹配中国上市公司和非上市公司数据,研究分析供应链网络中“自下而上”的反向创新传导效应。研究发现:(1)客户企业创新会向上游反向传导,对上游企业的探索式创新有促进作用;(2)在市场需求诱导机制的作用下,客户企业创新通过提升自身议价能力和提出更高、更稳定的产品技术需求,促进上游企业的探索式创新;(3)在技术知识扩散机制的作用下,客户企业创新显著提升上游企业知识技术能力的多元化程度,促进上游企业的探索式创新。进一步的研究发现:创新传导效应具有一定的方向性,不存在“自上而下”的探索式创新传导效应。而且,当上游企业响应市场需求的能力更强或者知识全局凝聚性更低、局部凝聚性更高时,以及客户企业与上游企业地理距离较远、客户企业所在行业信息环境较好时,创新的传导效应更强。本研究为企业充分挖掘供应链关联的创新效应和探究探索式创新的新路径,提供了理论依据和政策启示。

In the supply chain network,the innovation behaviors of downstream customer enterprises and upstream suppliers are interrelated.By matching the data of Chinese listed companies and non-listed companies,this paper studies the“bottom-up”reverse innovation transmission effect in the supply chain network.The results show that:First,customer enterprise innovation will conduct in the upstream direction,which has a significant and positive impact on the exploratory innovation of upstream enterprises.Second,under the effect of market demand induction mechanism,customer enterprise innovation promotes the exploratory innovation of upstream enterprises by improving their own bargaining power and putting forward higher and more stable requirements of product technology.Third,under the effect of technological knowledge diffusion mechanism,customer enterprise innovation significantly improves the diversification level of upstream enterprises’knowledge and technological capabilities,and thus promotes the exploratory innovation of upstream enterprises.Further research finds that the innovation transmission effect has certain directionality,and there is no“top-down”transmission effect in exploratory innovation.Moreover,when upstream enterprises have stronger ability to respond to market demand,the global cohesion of knowledge is lower,or the local cohesion is higher,the innovation transmission effect is stronger.When customer enterprises are geographically far away from upstream enterprises,or the information environment of the industry where customer enterprises are located is better,the innovation transmission effect is stronger.The main contributions of this paper are as follows:First,from the micro-enterprise perspective of the supply chain network,it combines the supply chain network with exploratory innovation and focuses on the“bottom-up”innovation transmission effect,forming a new perspective for studying enterprise innovation.Second,it conducts innovation research through the methods of“enterprise to enterprise”and“point to point”and constructs a matching sample of“upstream target enterprises–downstream customer enterprises”by matching the supply chain database with the patent database,which not only expands the number of samples and obtains patent information that can directly reflect the innovation level of customer enterprises,but also better controls the characteristics of affected enterprises and more accurately identifies the innovation transmission effect.Third,from the perspectives of market demand induction and technological knowledge diffusion,it empirically tests the transmission mechanism of exploratory innovation in the supply chain network at multiple levels,enriching and deepening the research on the mechanism behind innovation correlations.