桥接科学家创始人与企业技术创新绩效——基于专精特新“小巨人”企业的分析

Bridging scientist founders and firms’technological innovation performance:An empirical study based on SFPI Giants SMEs

桥接科学家兼具学术和产业研发工作经历,在应对学术与产业间差异与冲突、促进技术创新上具有重要价值。本研究探讨了桥接科学家创始人对企业技术创新绩效的影响,以及知识搜索的中介作用。以专精特新“小巨人”上市民营企业为样本,构建了一个包含创始人个人信息以及企业历年发明专利的数据集来进行实证分析。研究发现:相较于其他科学家创始人,桥接科学家创始人对企业技术创新数量和质量的影响均更强;桥接科学家创始人通过影响科学知识搜索和技术知识搜索提升了技术创新质量,而仅通过技术知识搜索增加了企业技术创新数量。

With the development of high-tech SMEs increasingly relying on scientific and technological discoveries,more scientists involve in entrepreneurship and play key founders in a firm.However,existing studies usually regard scientist-founders as a homoge⁃neous group and focus on the role of their human capital on firm growth,ignoring the differential impact of scientist-founders with dif⁃ferent work experiences on firm technological innovation.Based on the sociology of science and imprinting perspective,the paper dis⁃tinguishes scientist founders into three categories based on the type of work experience:academic scientist founders,industrial science founders,and bridging scientist founders.The paper argues that the mix of academic and industrial work experience shapes cognition,skills,and resource of bridging scientist founders,creating a special academic-industrial imprinting.Following that,the paper sug⁃gests that bridging scientist founders have a more substantial impact on technological innovation performance than other types of scientist founders,as they provide unique innovation strategies and resources resulting from their occupational imprinting.In addition,the paper explores the mediating roles of scientific and technological knowledge search in the relationship between bridging scientist founders and technological innovation performance,respectively.The paper constructs a unique dataset with a sample of 204 Specialized,Fined,Pe⁃culiar and Innovative(SFPI)privately listed SMEs using multiple sources to collect information on firms’founders,patent applica⁃tions,etc.The results of empirical analysis show that:compared to other scientist founders,bridging scientist founders have a stronger impact on the technological innovation performance of firms,especially on the quality of technological innovation;bridging scientist founders promote the technological innovation quality by influencing scientific knowledge search and technological knowledge search while increasing the firms'technological innovation quantity through technical knowledge search only;academic scientist founders pro⁃mote the technological innovation quantity through scientific knowledge search but academic scientist founders affect quantity through technological knowledge search.The paper makes some theoretical contributions:first,combining the sociology of science with imprint⁃ing theory,the paper finds that scientist founders with different work experiences have a different impact on the knowledge search and technological innovation performance of a firm,which enriches the literature on scientist founders.Second,the paper reveals that bridging scientists,as founders,because of their mixed work experience,would lead the firm to search for scientific and technological knowledge and in turn influence technological innovation performance,which provides additional evidence for understanding the value of bridging scientists.Third,the career imprinting of a scientist founder can influence the selection of knowledge search paths of a firm,which validates the perspective of local search.There are practical implications in this paper.First,policymakers can take many ways(including policy,funding,culture,and so on)to encourage and support the entrepreneurship of scientists,especially bridging scientists.Second,when academic or industrial scientists plan to start a business,he(she)can proactively engage in cross-border work.For example,academic scientists can shift their career from academic institutions to industrial organizations.In the last,the pa⁃per provides some suggestions for future research.