关键词: 创新, 技术创新, 协同创新, 竞争者, 调节

Abstract: In the process of innovation, individual enterprises often encounter factors such as increased technological complexity, increased uncertainty of innovation, shortage of their own resources, and insufficient R&D capabilities. Looking at the practice of innovation and development of enterprises in developed countries, one of the most important successful experiences is that break the boundaries of the enterprise, cooperate with multiple entities to innovate, and realize the maximum integration of innovation elements. Chinese enterprises urgently need to make good use of collaborative innovation to break through innovation bottlenecks and truly achieve innovation-driven development.
The term "synergy" first appeared in the system theory and was proposed by the German physicist Haken in 1971. It refers to the synchronized behavior or effect of coordination and cooperation among various subsystems. Later, the idea of synergy entered the field of innovation, resulting in the research of “industry-university-research (IUR) cooperation” and other directions. Chen Jin pointed out that collaborative innovation is an organizational model formed by the integration of enterprises, knowledge production organizations, users and other subjects in order to break through the bottleneck encountered by innovation. At present, scholars are not comprehensive in exploring the impact of collaborative innovation between enterprises and different external entities on corporate innovation performance. Therefore, it is difficult to guide enterprises to choose external entities collaborative innovation to maximize innovation performance under limited resources. Therefore, it is necessary to explore: (1) What are the external entities of corporate collaborative innovation? What is the difference between the impact of collaborative innovation with different entities on the innovation performance of enterprises? In addition, the existing literature mainly focuses on exploring the direct impact of corporate cooperative innovation on innovation performance, while ignoring the influencing factors of this relationship, which is not conducive to a deeper understanding of corporate cooperative innovation and building a more comprehensive theoretical framework. On the one hand, in reality, competitors will also collaborate with external entities to innovate. Because of the competitive relationship between enterprises and competitors, this kind of collaborative innovation will affect the enterprise more or less, so it should not be ignored. Therefore, the collaborative innovation of competitors should be an indispensable part of the theoretical model of corporate collaborative innovation. On the other hand, the understanding between enterprises and competitors has evolved from the "opposition" in the past to the current "cooperation-competition", but the previous research literature on the impact of competitors is mainly qualitative analysis, and only explores the collaborative innovation between competitors and enterprises, and ignores the possible impact of collaborative innovation between competitors and external entities on enterprises. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate: (2) How does the collaborative innovation of competitors and different entities affect the collaborative innovation of enterprises? At present, there is still a lack of research on these two issues in the academic community. Clarifying these two issues not only helps to initially establish the theoretical framework of collaborative innovation, but also is an important basis for enterprise innovation decision-making, so it is of great significance.
This article integrates the existing relevant literature, identifies six main external entities (government, competitors, suppliers, customers, research organizations, intermediaries) of corporate collaborative innovation, and selects some domestic enterprises as samples, empirically researches the difference between the effect of collaborative innovation between enterprises and different entities on corporate innovation performance, and the moderating role of corresponding competitors' collaborative innovation in it, and draws the following conclusions:
(1)Enterprise collaborative innovation mainly includes enterprise-government, enterprise-competitor, enterprise-supplier, enterprise-customer, enterprise-universities and scientific research institutes, and enterprise-intermediary institutions, all of which can improve enterprise innovation performance. Enterprise-customer collaborative innovation has the most significant impact on enterprise innovation performance, reflecting the main purpose of enterprise innovation in the market economy is to meet customer needs and provide better services. The effect of enterprise-supplier collaborative innovation on enterprise innovation performance ranks second, which reflects that suppliers are playing a powerful role in the process of actively seeking technological innovation to better meet customer needs. The effect of corporate-university and scientific research institutes' collaborative innovation on corporate innovation performance ranks third, which shows that production, education and research are indispensable in corporate technological innovation. The effect of corporate-competitor collaborative innovation on corporate innovation performance ranked fourth. This shows that supply chain collaborative innovation (supplier-enterprise-customer) has the best effect, followed by IUR collaborative innovation (enterprise-research organization), and finally collaborative innovation with competitors (enterprise-competitor). However, the effect of corporate-intermediary institutions' collaborative innovation is not obvious. This may be due to the lack of roles, overlapping roles, and the government's offside that hinder the development of science and technology intermediaries in China. Finally, corporate-government collaborative innovation has the least improvement effect, which also shows that the enterprise is the main body of innovation from the negative side. The government does not have more advantages than enterprises in collecting, processing technological innovation, and investment and financing. Therefore, the government′s regulation should be appropriate that not exceed the main role of enterprises in the market economy.
(2)Competitors′collaborative innovation has basically played a role in enhancing the effect of corporate collaborative innovation on corporate innovation performance: the stronger the collaborative innovation relationship among competitors, the more significant the promotion effect of corporate and government, suppliers, universities and research institutes, and intermediary institutions on corporate innovation performance, but competitor-customer collaborative innovation has no such regulatory effect. It can be seen that although competitors will compete with the enterprise for the customer's "cake", the cooperation between the two will make the "cake" bigger, resulting in better innovation performance and innovation capabilities. This gives us a deeper understanding of the relationship between companies and competitors, and also adds theoretical support for the industry to value cooperation-competition. At the same time, the research on competitors′ collaborative innovation is also an indispensable part of the research on the enterprise ′s collaborative innovation system. This paper′s research on competitors′ collaborative innovation as a moderating variable is a preliminary attempt to fill the research gap in this field, and the results of the research also inspired subsequent researchers to carry out more detailed and in-depth research in this direction.
This article also has some limitations that are worth discussing and further research: First, due to the length of the article, this study only explores the impact of each type of collaborative innovation of competitors on the corresponding types of collaborative innovation of enterprises. Second, the sample enterprises in this study are mainly concentrated in some provinces and cities, of which Anhui enterprises exceed one quarter, and most of the enterprises come from high-tech industries. Because the region and industry have an impact on collaborative innovation, the conclusion of this study needs to be further expanded to investigate.

Key words:  innovation, technological innovation, collaborative innovation, competitor, moderating