Science Research Management ›› 2020, Vol. 41 ›› Issue (6): 56-64.

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Innovation chain: An integrated analysis framework from the procedural perspective

Shi Lulu1, Jiang Xu1,2   

  1. 1. School of Management, Xi′an Jiaotong University, Xi′an 710049, Shaanxi, China;  2. Key Laboratory of Process Control and Efficiency Engineering, Ministry of Education, Xi′an Jiaotong University, Xi′an 710049, Shaanxi, China
  • Received:2019-10-19 Revised:2020-03-26 Online:2020-06-20 Published:2020-06-20

Abstract: The concept of "Innovation Chain" in the innovation management research has gained increasing popularity. Since the concept was first proposed in the end of the 20th century, it contributes a unique idea to the innovation stream of research. Innovation chain research aims at studying the innovation mode of companies and providing new means for improving the innovation results transformation and enhancing the breakthrough innovation. Over the past two decades researchers have explored a wide variety of topics in this area. As a result, research evidence has progressed in a somewhat fragmented manner where its cumulative impact is difficult to discern. However, there is few systematic literature reviews targeting at the innovation chain topics. Based on the review of the literature in this area, an integrated theoretical framework including the construction, operation, and performance of the innovation chain is established. More specifically, six relevant topics are summarized and presented in this framework. Drawing on this framework, the authors set out some potential research topics aimed at advancing current understanding of innovation chain and implications for Chinese innovation context. Due to the shortening of product life cycle, the diversification of customer demand and the improvement of technology complexity, it is difficult for a single enterprise to provide enough technological and financial support for innovation. Even the leading enterprises with strong strength and advanced technology in the industry can hardly achieve ideal innovation results by acting alone. High innovation costs and investments make most of the companies choose to corporate with others to establish joint innovation. With the development of information technology, some enterprises further realize cross-industry and cross-region resource sharing, and therefore, open innovation is gradually formed. This mode of innovation is different from previous modes, which emphasizes the deep opening of innovation environment, innovation subject, innovation resources. Although open innovation can guide enterprises to integrate multiple resources to achieve innovation goals, it fails to open the "black box" existed between innovation input and output. In particular, the management of innovation participants and activities have been neglected, and it is easy to generate uncontrollable chaos in the process of open innovation. In fact, no matter it is technology, product or process innovation, which all need to go through an interlocking "innovation chain" to transform the innovative ideas into valuable goods or services. However, Chinese enterprises are facing an insurmountable gap between these links in their innovation process. Therefore, in order to break through the current innovation dilemma in China, it is important to establish an "innovation chain" among Chinese companies. Existing research has explored the innovation chain from different angles, but the research clusters are not clear. Although scholars have established some theoretical frameworks for the relevant topics, these frameworks mainly focus on the operational aspect of the innovation chain, and neglect the analysis of the construction, operation, and their relationship with the innovation performance. Based on the in-depth understanding of the procedural nature of innovation chain, this paper classifies the existing literature according to the construction, operation and results of innovation chain, and summarizes six research topics for evaluating the research in this field. The construction of the innovation chain. There are two main aspects of the innovation chain construction. First, majority of the innovation chain studies have paid attention to the innovation chain stage division. There is still a debate in the existing literature on the stage division, including three-stage, four-stage, and five-stage innovation chain. Second, some studies have also studied the characteristics of the innovation chain participants. In the process of innovation chain operation, different types of participants play different roles. The classification of the participants in the innovation chain can help identify their functions and responsibilities, and therefore conduct collaborative management. The operation of the innovation chain. This stream of research mainly focusing on studying the nodes connection, chain collaboration, and operation mode. Specifically, stages of the innovation chain do not exist in isolation, but is connected by the nodes of each stage to form a complete chain. When one or more nodes of the innovation chain break, the innovation activities will be interrupted. Therefore, it is important to analyze the causes of the fracture and fix the connection and collaboration among the nodes. Besides, the multi-stage and complex nature of the innovation chain result in the diversity of its operation modes. With the development of the research in this area, scholars have proposed different innovation chain modes, such as forward linear mode, backward feedback mode, nonlinear mode, and circular innovation chain mode. In addition, in order to improve the efficiency of innovation, the innovation chain should also achieve the coordination with other chains (value chain, industrial chain, supply chain, etc.) from the overall perspective. Innovation chain performance. Currently, innovation activities are involved in an open, continuous, interactive and systematic process. The value creation process of the innovation activity is interlocking and progressive, which makes the traditional single-stage innovation value evaluation method no longer applicable. The innovation chain provides an analytic framework to depict the efficiency of each stage of innovation, the overall innovation efficiency of enterprises and the complex relationship between enterprise performance. Therefore, by strengthening the relationship between the various participants and building connections between the innovation stages, the company can realize the innovation chain spillover. In general, the research on innovation chain is still in its initial stage, and there is a huge development space for innovation chain in both theoretical and practical fields. From the theoretical perspective, the theoretical system of innovation chain still needs to be further improved. In the future, the research on innovation chain should try to build and improve the theory of innovation chain by combining grounded theory, case study and quantitative empirical analysis. From practical perspective, the operation of innovation chain has a great dependence on the institutional environment, the level of economic development, the stage of social development and other factors. Therefore, the management and coordination of innovation chain need to take Chinese context into full consideration to truly solve the innovation dilemma and problems of Chinese enterprises.

Key words: innovation chain, procedural perspective, integrative framework, Chinese social relations