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| The Structure and Evolution Characteristics of Inventor-Entrepreneurs Cooperation Network in China |
| Sun Yinglin1,Tang Heng2,Cheng Long1,Su Wencheng3 |
| (1.School of Management, Jiangsu University;2.School of Intellectual Property, Jiangsu University;3.Institute of Science and Technology Information, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China) |
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Abstract Entrepreneur's innovation activity is the key to promoting enterprise innovation and development. Under the background of transformation of scientific and technological achievements and technological entrepreneurship, "inventor entrepreneur" is becoming prominent in the mainstream. They have two identities: "technologist" and "entrepreneur".As one of the products of technological innovation, patent is an important index to measure technological innovation activities, and it is also one of the most common and direct ways for entrepreneurs to participate in technological innovation. It has been found that patents with entrepreneur participation can significantly improve enterprise performance. Cooperative R&D is an important way to make up for the shortcomings of R&D capabilities and improve the efficiency of scientific and technological achievements. Inventors play an important role in patent R&D cooperation by which informal innovation cooperation network formed helps to promote the knowledge fusion between different subjects. Based on knowledge flow and resource interaction integration, they realize knowledge sharing and dynamic division of labor to obtain more heterogeneous resources. Based on social capital theory and social network theory, existing studies focus on star inventors or key inventors from the perspective of co-occurrence network and knowledge network. However, most researches focus on the impact of inventors and their related characteristics on firm innovation performance at the single role level, without considering the role coupling effect of node agents. Thus, aiming at the dual identities of inventor-entrepreneurs, this paper analyzes the structural evolution characteristics of inventor-entrepreneurs in patent cooperation network and its impact on firm innovation performance.#br# A conceptual model of structure and evolution characteristics of Inventor-Entrepreneur cooperation network is constructed based on ground theory. Then,several network indicators including entrepreneur degree centrality, entrepreneur betweenness centrality, density, group degree centrality, etc. and analysis framework are constructed based on the socialnetwork analysis method. Finally, the patent data and entrepreneur data of Science and Technology Innovation Board from 2014 to 2019 are used for empirical test.#br# The results show that inventor-entrepreneurs in China are gradually reducing their overall participation in patent cooperation and strengthening their location attribute of key information hub in cooperative relationship. The density, group degree centrality and group betweenness centrality of network Y are higher than those of network N. The entrepreneur degree centrality, density and group degree centrality are negatively correlated with innovation performance. The betweenness centrality and group betweenness centrality is positively correlated with innovation performance.#br# The theoretical significance of this paper lies in the following aspects: First, combining with the Chinese context, this paper refines the types of inventor-entrepreneurs from the perspective of patent behavior, and puts them into the research paradigm of cooperative network. Secondly, in view of the dual particularity of the role of inventor-entrepreneur as technologist and entrepreneur, this paper conducts a multi-dimensional and dynamic evolution analysis based on the structural characteristics of inventor-entrepreneur in the patent R&D cooperation network. Thirdly, this paper discusses the relationship between the characteristics of inventor entrepreneur patent R&D cooperation network and firm performance by using individual structure index and overall structure index. It is suggested that inventor-entrepreneurs need to control their participation in patent R&D cooperation within a moderate range and avoid comprehensive and in-depth participation in technology R&D. In addition, enterprises also need to control the density of the overall cooperation network and guard against the technology exclusivity caused by overwhelmingly close cooperation network. Last but not the least inventor-entrepreneurs need to strengthen their role as "intermediary bridges" in the R&D cooperation network.#br#
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Received: 07 December 2021
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