How emerging firms build their technological space? The role of technological capability portfolio

Abstract

Abstract: With the development of knowledge economy and the emergence of innovation 2.0 era, technological innovation has become an important driving force of national and regional economy and politics. As a bridge between "old" and "new" technology, emerging technology plays a fundamental and supportive role in the whole technological innovation chain, which is the source and guarantee of core competitiveness of strategic emerging industries. However, emerging technology are facing uncertainty, risk and ambiguity, so how emerging firms integrate their technology and explore new technology domains? Specifically, how these firms build their own technology space? Trying best to build unique technology bundle and pursue heterogeneity, or consistent with industrial technology space and build similar technology bundle?
Actually, existing theories of technological space heterogeneity lie in technological merger and acquisition, R&D alliance, technology portfolio assessment, technology competition analysis, and innovation performance, which has formed ripe theoretical system. But existing research of technological space heterogeneity are facing some shortages. First of all, a lot of relevant research(for example, technological distance and technological proximity) investigate the technological distribution of two or more counterpart, but ignored the broader industrial technological background. Due to the dynamic and uncertainty of emerging technology, the concept of technological space heterogeneity could transcend the notion of "counterpart", and better describe the heterogeneity of cross-level technological space between firm and industry level. Second, technological space heterogeneity is rarely treated as R&D and patent strategies, whose technological capability foundation and its portfolio effect are always neglected. In emerging technology, the technological innovation is always concerned with the recognition, forecasting and exploitation of technological trajectories, or the capability of perception and catch the emerging technological opportunities in the uncertain and ambiguous environment, which depends on the capability portfolio.
The data of this paper has three sources.(1) The patent data comes from a patent database named SOOPAT, which embodies over 80 million patent documents from 98 countries and regions.(2) The financial data comes from CSMAR.(3) Some data(for example R&D input and government subsidies) comes from annual reports of listed companies, and they are collected manually. Considering the potential influence of new accounting principles in 2007 and the completeness of financial data and annual reports of listed companies, this paper chooses 2009-2015 as the sample period, and removes the ST and *ST firms in this period. Eventually, this paper 489 489 enterprises in strategic emerging industries.
Focusing on the question, this paper analysis 489 enterprises in strategic emerging industries based on the perspective of technological capability and its portfolio. This paper find:(1) Under the condition of high core technological capability and general technological capability, technological space heterogeneity has positive effects on firm performance;(2) Under the condition of high core technological capability and low general technological capability, the relationship between technological space heterogeneity and firm performance are inverted U-shaped;(3) Under the condition of low core technological capability, no matter their general ability is high or low, technological space heterogeneity has negative effects on firm performance.
The theoretical contribution of this paper mainly reflected in two aspects.(1) This paper introduces the concept of "technological space" to analyze the question of technological space heterogeneity between different levels. The concept of technological space heterogeneity could transcend the notion of "counterpart", and better describe the heterogeneity of cross-level technological space between firm and industry level, by doing so, this paper could expand the studies of firm technology trajectories and technological opportunity.(2) This paper explores the technological capability and its portfolio effect in emerging technology domain, to reconcile the conflict conclusion of existing studies. By introducing the situational variables of technological capability portfolio, this paper takes part in the discussion of the relationship between technological space heterogeneity and technology capability, and reconcile the conflicting findings between technological space heterogeneity and firm performance. What′s more, this paper response to the call of "investigate firm′s technological heterogeneity from the industry level" and studies the differential mechanism between technological space heterogeneity and firm performance under different technological capability portfolio context.
The managerial implications are as follows:(1) The findings of this paper help the emerging firms to identify their own technological capability portfolio, and provides new ideas to build technological strategy as well. In the complicated environment of competition with the coexisting of threats and opportunities, emerging firms are taking important responsibilities of development. How to get clear of their own technological capability portfolio, and how to take appropriate innovation strategy of technology to stand firm even seize the initiative in the emerging industry, are all important questions for practitioner and researchers.(2) The findings of this paper help the emerging firms to build appropriate technological space in order to improve their performance. This paper discusses differential technological space building strategies under different technological capability portfolio, which helps emerging firms to plan the R&D rhythm and patent strategies to build better technological space and gain better performance.

Key words: emerging firm, technological space, technological capability portfolio

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