Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No. 10, 2023

 

Complex Networks-Based Interconnected Innovation in Chinese Enterprises

(Abstract)

 

An Tongliang, Wei Jie and Jiang Ge

 

Digital technology has profoundly affected enterprises’ innovation behavior, and the linear and interactive innovation in the industrial era is changing to a new mode in the digital era — the interconnected innovation. Interconnected innovation is an innovation model in which multiple distributed agents embedded in the Internet — including firms, heterogeneous knowledge bodies and consumers — establish extensive connections through target knowledge search, resulting in knowledge enrichment and the emergence of innovation. The article constructs an interconnected innovation model based on complex networks to reveal the characteristics of the interconnected innovation network structure and analyses the behavioral characteristics of enterprises as nodes in the process of interconnected innovation network evolution, and empirically tests enterprises’ interconnected innovation behavioral mechanism using the data of listed companies in China. The results show that in the digital economy, the more deeply an enterprise is embedded in the interconnected innovation network and the more interconnected innovation activities it carries out, the better will be its innovation performance, because the interconnected innovation behaviors will form the basic characteristics of innovation cost-saving and knowledge preference connections. Interconnected innovation provides a new path for Chinese technological latecomers to search for knowledge, make breakthroughs in core technologies, and regulate innovation.