Abstract:    Technological entrepreneurs refer to the entrepreneurs who have research and development (R&D) technologies and can apply these technologies to firm innovation activities. Therefore, this paper regards the chairman with R&D working experience as a symbol of technological entrepreneur, and studies his impact on firm innovation. Since the State Council issued the National Outline of Medium- and Long-term Science and Technology Development Plan (2006-2020) in 2006, the rate of technological entrepreneurs in Chinese A-share listed companies has increased from 8.22% in 2008 to 23.90% in 2017, indicating that technological entrepreneur has become an important innovative force in these companies. In recent years, a large number of technical entrepreneurs have taken roots in firms and promoted continuous innovation. So, novel problem of this paper is that whether technological entrepreneurs can effectively allocate innovation resources and exert a positive impact on firm innovation. Addressing this issue has important reference value for improving the innovation support policies of enterprises and giving full play to the innovation leading role of technological entrepreneurs.
     The research issue of the influence of technological entrepreneurs on firm innovation is essentially a topic about how the manager′s personal characteristics affect the enterprise growth. Innovation is the key for enterprise growth and economic development, which is also a classic and hot topic in economic research. The existing literature has carried out a lot of research from the perspectives of government policy (such as economic policy uncertainty, innovation subsidy policy and innovation tax policy) and enterprise level factors (such as industry characteristics, corporate governance, financing constraints and pay gap). Recently, the research on personal characteristics of executives as influential factors of enterprise innovation has gradually become a hot research topic. Relevant studies have analyzed the impact of managers′ personal characteristics on firm innovation from the perspectives of military experience, pilot CEOs, academic experience, overconfidence and political connections, and found that the personal characteristics of executives are important factors for company innovation.
    These studies provide a good research basis for the research issue of this paper, but there are still some research gaps. First, although the existing literature has examined the impact of the personal characteristics of executives on firm innovation, the research about chairman is still less, to say nothing of the research about technological entrepreneurs on firm innovation. Second, although a few papers focus on the impact of the R&D working experience of executives on company innovation, these studies fail to deeply study the effectiveness of executives′ personal characteristics on the allocation of innovation resources. Third, most of the existing studies are based on the samples of developed countries but ignore the sample of developing countries. The enterprises in countries of economic transition such as China are facing more diverse economic objectives. The impact of executive individual characteristics on the allocation of innovation resources is also affected by the characteristics of enterprises, especially ownership. However, there are few papers to study this question from the perspective of enterprise ownership.
    Among the personal characteristics, the R&D working experience represents the innovative experience of manager. This paper innovatively studies the important role of individual experience in innovation from the perspective of technological entrepreneurs. Based on the financial data of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2008 to 2017 and the entrepreneur data collected by ourselves, this paper provides a finer-grained analysis of the relationship between technological entrepreneurs and firm innovation. It is found that technological entrepreneurs can significantly improve firm innovation output. After adding control variables and using instrumental variable, the conclusions still show that the R&D working experience of entrepreneur is very important in the process of enterprise innovation. To test the mechanisms underlying, this paper uses the Mediation Effect Models to check whether technological entrepreneurs can stimulate firm innovation by increasing innovation resources. The empirical results show that technological entrepreneurs increase the intensity of innovation subsidy and R&D expenditure, then further promote innovation output. Further evidences support that technological entrepreneurs only promote the innovation output of non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs), while those in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) fail to do so.
    The marginal contributions of this paper are mainly reflected in two aspects. First, this paper innovatively regards the R&D working experience of chairman as a symbol of technological entrepreneur and studies its impact on firm innovation. Our paper not only enriches the research of corporate innovation and entrepreneur innovation theories, but also expands the research horizon of High Echelon Theory. Second, this paper pays original attention to the influence of executives′ personal characteristics on the effectiveness of innovation resource allocation. Although some studies have found that the personal characteristics of executives are the influencing factors of firm innovation, there are few studies that focuses on the mechanisms of technological entrepreneurs′ effect on firm innovation from the perspective of innovation resource allocation. Particularly, we also find that the ownership of Chinese enterprises has heterogeneous effects on this issue.
    The enlightenments of this paper are: First, technological entrepreneur is an important actor that affects firm innovation. And it is also very important for firms to optimize the allocation of internal resources and external resources. Because technological entrepreneurs can improve the internal and external innovation environment of non-SOEs, and then promote firm innovations, non-SOEs should pay more attention to the introduction and cultivation of technological entrepreneurs. For SOEs, although technological entrepreneurs improve the R&D expenditures of enterprises, they do not promote the innovation output of firms, so SOEs should fully stimulate technological entrepreneurs to improve the efficiency of innovation resources. Second, the government should create an environment to encourage firm innovation and improve the policy system to cultivate the innovative spirit of entrepreneurs. Especially, the government should also implement more accurate fiscal incentive policies. In summary, we should give better play to the role of the government′s "support hand", support the formation of technological entrepreneurs, so that they play their role of innovation leading, and finally guide the innovative development of economy.

Key words: technological entrepreneur, innovation output, government innovation subsidy, R&D expenditure