Abstract:    Constructing an open innovation ecosystem is a crucial channel for enhancing innovation competitiveness. Although prior studies extensively discuss the established internal and external factors driving firms′ open innovation, there is a scarcity of research focusing on the role of firms as strategic leaders and the deep-seated logic behind this role. Based on the theory of firm behavior, this study used the data from Chinese listed companies from 2011 to 2021 and employed both fixed effects model and interaction effect model to test the hypotheses. The empirical findings revealed that when a firm′s actual innovation performance falls below its innovation aspiration, the firm will increase its openness to innovation in order to reshape their competitive advantage. Higher peer innovation willingness and analyst attention strengthen the perception of innovation pressure, thus promoting the positive effect of this relationship. Additionally, executives with R&D backgrounds and digital transformation empower problemistic search, enhancing the firm′s strategic responsiveness in increasing innovation openness, thereby reinforcing the facilitative effect of innovation performance expectation gap. The heterogeneity analysis revealed that in private enterprises and non-high-tech industries, the positive effect of the innovation performance expectation gap on the firm′s openness to innovation is more pronounced. This theoretical framework has organically combined the response decision under the innovation performance below aspiration with the perception of innovation pressure and problem-oriented search, thereby deepening and expanding the theoretical research on the behavior theory of the firm and innovation openness.

Key words:  innovation performance expectation gap, corporate openness to innovation, open innovation, behavioral theory of enterprises