The impact of network positions in scientific collaboration on pharmaceutical firms' technological innovation performance: Moderating roles of scientific collaboration strength and patent stock

Partners' centrality in scientific collaboration and exploratory innovation: Roles of patent stock and structural holes

Studies adopting a first-order social-capital perspective have found that firms' innovation is influenced by network embeddedness in scientific collaboration. The present study adopts a second-order social-capital perspective to examine the effect of partners' centrality on exploratory innovation. We further investigate the boundaries of this effect via patent stock and structural holes (SHs), individually and jointly. Our theoretical framework is validated using negative binomial regression models and a sample of patents and joint publications by 194 Chinese pharmaceutical firms between 2007 and 2021. The results indicate that a focal firm's exploratory innovation is boosted by partners' centrality in scientific collaboration, but this effect is weakened by patent stock and SHs. Moreover, patent stock and SHs jointly influence this relationship-that is, partners' centrality has a strong positive effect on exploratory innovation when the firm holds low patent stock and occupies fewer SHs. This study offers insights into how businesses might profit from the innovation advantages of influential partners by exploring the contingencies of patent stock and SHs. Extending the framework to second-order aspects, we further illuminate the scope of the scientific collaboration-innovation issue.

The impact of industry-university-research projects on biopharmaceutical companies' innovation performance: moderating roles of government subsidies for innovation

Innovation holds paramount importance for both nations and businesses. This article presents a panel regression model designed to assess the fixed effects of industry-university-research (IUR) cooperation projects on innovation performance. Furthermore, it examines the moderating impact of government innovation subsidies by utilizing data spanning from 2007 to 2021, encompassing 326 listed Chinese biopharmaceutical firms. Our findings reveal that industry-university-research-cooperation projects have the potential to significantly enhance innovation performance across three key metrics: input, output, and quality for firms. The presence of government innovation subsidies as a moderator is found to have a positive influence on IUR-cooperation projects and their innovative inputs. However, it can yield adverse effects on IUR-cooperation projects with respect to innovation outputs and quality. The insights presented in this paper introduce innovative recommendations for elevating corporate innovation quality and refining the policies governing IUR cooperation.

Network centrality, support organizations, exploratory innovation: Empirical analysis of China's integrated circuit industry

Exploratory innovation is critical to the breakthrough of core technologies in the integrated circuit (IC) industry, and cooperative innovation is a promising form of IC industry development. According to the viewpoint of social network, this paper constructs intercity networks of the IC industry by using a data set of cooperation patents from 2011 to 2020 in China. We uncover the evolution characteristics of the innovation networks, explore the relationship between network centrality and exploratory innovation in a city, and consider universities and development zones, named support organizations, as moderating variables. The results of the social network analysis (SNA) and dynamic panel system generalized method of moments model (System-GMM) are given as follows: Cities are increasingly inclined to collaborate with counterparts over time for innovation, but the overall network scale remains small. Beijing occupies core position in the networks. A cooperative innovation model driven by peripheral cities has been formed as the number of the peripheral cities has gradually increased. The network centrality of a city has a positive effect on its exploratory innovation. Both universities and development zones positively moderate the effect of network centrality on exploratory innovation. Based on the characteristics of the network, our study reveals the importance of taking the internal structure of the network and the node support environment into the same framework, which provides guidance for the innovative development of the world IC industry.