A re-understanding of the

Abstract

Abstract: After 2006, "enterprise-based innovative economy" became the popular language in China. But practice in the past years showed that the popular slogan had to face to the resistance from contending understandings which deeply rooted in the whole society. The most famous two contending ideas are "S&T as frontward force" and "market as backward force" in innovation, i.e. the idea of technology transfer and free market dogma. Such conflict resulted in under-commitment to innovation needs in enterprises. This paper focuses on the "enterprise-based" topic in the era of construction of an innovative country. We believe that enterprises which have certain mechanisms are proper agents of innovation, which is determined by some fundamental characteristics of contemporary innovation. Specifically, we take contemporary innovation as an economic activity which is a dynamic recombination of technologies, one is science-based while the other is organization-based.
Based on this, the paper answers two questions. The first is why enterprises are the fundamental innovators. Compared with public research institutes and universities, enterprises are better able to recombine different technologies, and more likely to continuously improve products and technologies due to its division of labor and behavior mode, both of which are demand-oriented. That means only the enterprises can meet those fundamental characteristics of innovation, which also fundamentally determines the limitation of "technology transfer". Furthermore, because of crucial importance of absorptive capacity and complementary assets, it is the success of technology transfer that is the very outcome of the enhancement of enterprises′ innovation capability, which is always misunderstood as the origin and engine as innovation-driven economy.
The second question we paid attention here is the proper mechanisms those make enterprises competent agents of innovation. According to the theory of innovative firm, there are three social conditions of innovative enterprises, i.e. strategic control, financial commitment and organizational integration. All of these three are derived from intended organizational development and learning and deeply embedded in certain institutional context, rather than natural outcome of a market process. Therefore, the essence of "enterprises as the fundamental agents in innovative countries" is to define and design suitable institutional framework which promotes the emergence and upgrading of social conditions of innovative enterprises.
Some policy suggestions are given in the final part. Taking China′s specific conditions into consideration, it is important to break the stereotype of "innovation-driven development", e.g. to pay more attention to incremental innovation and high-quality investment. It is also a critical issue to release the bonus of the complete national industrial system. Such completeness is a key factor to stimulate local entrepreneurship, which is always depressed by oversized M&A to Western corporations. The third policy topic is to improve innovators′ reward by changing institutional buyers′ behavior, which is necessary to help more and more local enterprises to cross the barriers to entry and to build competitive advantage. State-society relationship is also crucial in innovation. Here we suggest suitable empowerment to society in certain institutions such as finance, labor and IPR. The fifth and last policy issue is the organizing of a heavy devotion in techno-science research which is oriented by the upgrading demand.

Key words: enterprise-oriented theory, innovation, technology transfer, market clearing, innovation policies

Sun Xi. A re-understanding of the "enterprise-oriented theory" in the construction of an innovative country[J]. Science Research Management, 2021, 42(9): 24-33.

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A re-understanding of the "enterprise-oriented theory" in the construction of an innovative country

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