Entrepreneurship incubation platforms achieve entrepreneurship ecological advantages mainly based on platform enterprises. However, the existing literature has no strong explanation for the dynamic process of ecological advantages. Facing the urgency of reality and theoretical gap, through an exploratory case study of ‘Investment + Incubation’ process of Xiaomi, this paper attempts to explore how entrepreneurial incubation platforms achieve ecological advantages through value co-creation from the dynamic perspective of capabilities.
    This paper selects ‘Xiaomi and entrepreneurship enterprises’ as the research object for the following reasons: firstly, Xiaomi is a typically successful case of building ecological advantages, which has not been explained yet; secondly, the start-ups incubated by Xiaomi reach to 260, large size of research samples mean relatively universal; thirdly, Xiaomi incubation performance is outstanding, and the data is rich and easy to be available. As the analysis unit in embedded case study, there are two standards we choose for entrepreneurship enterprises: firstly, the entrepreneurship enterprise should be early established and relatively stable; secondly, the performance of entrepreneurship enterprise should be relatively significant. We conducted a five-and-a-half-year case study, we collected the first-hand date by depth interview, participatory observation and internal non-public information, as for the second-hand data which obtained in various ways like official website, social media, public speeches, publications, academic papers, media reports and so on, through the "triangle verification" we guaranteed the reliability and validity of case study.
   The study finds that following the logic of "value co-creation, dynamic capability, ecological advantage" can explain the influence mechanism of value co-creation of entrepreneurship incubation platform on ecological advantages, it goes through three stages: in the stage of demand co-identification, the entrepreneurship incubation platform and start-ups promote the formation of opportunity perception and realize ecological co-existence through communication and resource identification; In the stage of product co-development, the entrepreneurship incubation platform and start-ups promote the formation of model learning and realize ecological inter-growth through heart-to-heart means and resource allocation; in the stage of market co-promotion, the entrepreneurship incubation platform and start-ups promote the formation of market restructuring and realize ecological regeneration through exchange and resource optimization.
   Our research has important theoretical implications in several folds: Firstly, the existing literature splits the organic relationship between value co-creation, dynamic capability and ecological advantage studies, the paper sums up the theoretical model of business incubation platform based on them, which builds a dialogue bridge and provides a new explanation logic for the formation of entrepreneurship incubation platform′s ecological advantage. Secondly, the existing theory of ecological advantage is still in its infancy. Although the carrier of value creation transformed from value chain to value co-creation network, the process mechanism of value co-creation affecting ecological advantage has not been revealed yet. The paper opens up the black box of "ecological advantages of entrepreneurship incubation platforms" and digs out the connotation and evolution characteristics of different stages of entrepreneurship incubation platform′s ecological advantage. Finally, the existing dynamic capability theory is often used to explain the process of enterprises obtaining and maintaining competitive advantage in dynamic environment, but not used to explore the formation mechanism of ecological advantage and the special situation of entrepreneurial incubation platform. The paper uses dynamic capability as an intermediary variable to explain the realization process of entrepreneurial incubation platform′s ecological advantage, identifies how dynamic capabilities in different stages promote the dynamic evolution of ecological advantages, enrich and expand the theory of dynamic capabilities.
    Our findings also provide theoretical guidelines for the innovation and transformation of incubators: Firstly, large and medium-sized enterprises can try to be an entrepreneurship incubation platform, which can realize their own sustainable development meanwhile incubate the growth of start-ups. The entrepreneurship incubation platform should provide all-round resource support and authority. Secondly, with the help of entrepreneurship incubation platform, start-ups can break through the bound of opportunities and resources to improve the survival rate, start-ups should strengthen mutual cooperation, develop new products, services or explore new markets jointly, and build a symbiotic ecosystem; finally, the government should change the policy support for entrepreneurship incubation platform: from "blood transfusion" to "blood hematopoiesis" and "subsidy" to "follow-up investment", reduce the investment number of incubation based on government and increase the funding for incubator based on business, promote the upgrading of "double creation" service and form a new pattern of innovation and entrepreneurship.