关键词: 不连续创新模式, 协同价值创造, Stackelberg博弈, 策略优化, 策略选择

Abstract:  Confronting the technological and market discontinuity, traditional manufacturing enterprises are compelled to shift their core technology and lay their stress on the balance between maintaining their existing competence and formulating innovative technological arrangement. Increasingly, traditional manufacturing incumbents are aware of the significance of complementary assets of new technology firms to product innovation, technology trajectory choice and competitive advantage formation. They tend to facilitate technology innovation cooperation or strategic alliance with new technology entrants to pursue new development and value creation. To be specific, the large enterprises will choose to cooperate or collaborate with small technology-based enterprises of core knowledge or complementary technology. Extant researches have emphasized the importance of collaborative value creation, and definition is clarified as the pattern or mode of accomplishing value creation through developing the resources within and among enterprises collaboratively. There are fruitful researches on collaborative value creation. Most of studies approve that collaborative value creation can directly improve the cooperative performance of enterprises with collaborative relationship, and indirectly promote the internal and external performance of firm through relationship governance. However, it is surprising that the studies of strategy in collaborative value creation between enterprises under discontinuous innovation mode are not well documented in existing related literature.Therefore, it is worth exploring the strategy issue concerning traditional manufacturing enterprises cooperating with new technology firms to achieve collaborative value creation. Based on the extant research about the definition and exposition of durable arm′s-length relationships and strategic partnership between enterprises, this study defines the starting point of collaborative value creation between enterprises as the time when the first cooperative relationship is established. Through field investigation and case study, the framework of collaborative value creation between traditional manufacturing enterprise and small technological firms is proposed. Besides, a two-phase Stackelberg game model is established by refining the strategy optimization and strategy selection process in the framework. This study attempts to address the gaps mentioned above by examining and discussing the compositions and effects of strategies of enterprises respectively.Field investigation and case study are conducted to conclude the framework of collaborative value creation between traditional manufacturing enterprise and small technical firms. According to the typicality principle, three pairs of large manufacturing enterprises and small technological firms are chosen as case companies deliberately. By analyzing the case companies, this study draws the conclusion about the mechanism of collaborative value creation: Facing discontinuous innovation, large enterprises will cooperate with small technology-based firms with complementary technology. Signing contract is the sign of initial cooperation. During the initial process of cooperation, the technical service marketing ability of small enterprises will affect the degree of cooperation and follow-up cooperation intention. Therefore, the game process of enterprise strategy optimization and strategy selection is embodied in the process of policy selection and optimization of large enterprise′s technological innovative intention input and technology service marketing management input of small enterprises.Based on the framework, this study builds a Stackelberg game in which the leader firm moves first and then the follower firms move sequentially, describing the strategy selection and optimization between large and small enterprises. This model only takes a large manufacturing enterprise and a small technology-based enterprise into consideration. In perfect information condition, large enterprise is the leader and small firm is the follower. The game process is described as: under the technological discontinuous innovation mode, the large enterprise should take action first by working out the technological innovation input policy and implementing the technological innovation strategy; the small firm should decide investing service marketing management or not according to the large company′s technological innovative intention. Technological innovative intention input of large enterprise and service marketing management input of small firm are critical factors in analyzing the optimization issue of the company strategy. This study utilizes the reverse induction method to solve the two-stage game model. In essence, the game model represents one constrained optimization problem and one unconstrained optimization problem. According to sufficient conditions, necessary conditions and complementary relaxation conditions in Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions respectively, Lagrange function is constructed and solved. Hence two propositions are raised, proved, simulated and analyzed.The results are summarized as follows. (1) For the large enterprise, there exists an innovative intention input threshold, and the average opportunity cost has positive effect on the threshold. The cost parameter of technological innovation and the penalty coefficient of technical service contract have negative impact on the threshold. This means that to fulfill transformation and upgrading, resource investments are needed with minimum conditions, which will affect the cooperation intention of small enterprises. (2) For the small firm, the innovative intention input of the large enterprise, channel probability, intention probability and the penalty coefficient have positive impact on the service marketing management input of the small firm, while the average opportunity cost has negative impact on the service marketing management input of the small firm. The results reflect that opportunity cost is an important risk faced by small firms. Acknowledging large enterprises′ technological innovative investment, establishing ties and reaching cooperation intentions, and making full use of contracts are the important factors of technical service marketing management investment of small firms. The numerical simulation analysis verifies the consistency between propositions and simulations.This study brings a new perspective into the mechanism of collaborative value creation. Through investigation and case study, the framework of collaborative value creation between enterprises isexplored, summarized and proposed, which enriches the research on relative studies. At the same time, unlike former studies, this research explores the direct impact of discontinuous innovation on firm performance by constructing a behavioral strategy game model, and emphasizes the influence of optimal strategy on the realization of collaborative value creation. What′s more, from systematic and dynamic perspective, formation and evolution of collaborative value creation strategies are discussed, which are useful attempts and lay foundations for further empirical research.For large enterprises, technological innovation investment is necessary.Technological innovative intention investment can reflect the will and determination of enterprise decision makers to transform and upgrade, and attract small related firms to cooperate. For small firms, the essential task is to promote technical service cooperation. Small firms should attach great importance to the improvement of their own technical service marketing capabilities and the maintenance of the key clients′ relationship. For regional governments, it is important to create and build an innovative and entrepreneurial atmosphere, and form mechanism advocating information exchange and enhancing mutual trust among enterprises.

Key words: discontinuous innovation mode, collaborative value creation, Stackelberg game, strategy optimization, strategy selection