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| Complementary Management of Complex Product Innovation Ecosystem: An Example of COMAC C919 |
| Hu Jingbo 1,Ouyang Taohua 2,Zhang Feng3 |
| (1. School of Business Administration, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, Nanchang 330013, China;2.School of Economics and Management, Beihang University;3. School of Humanities and Social Sciences (School of Public Administration), BeiHang University, Beijing 100191, China) |
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Abstract The essence of the innovation ecosystem is complementary assets such as product technology, organization and institutions. The existing studies on innovation ecosystem of complex product focus on the innovation ability of focal firms, and the related research on complementary management to promote innovation ecosystem is lack of in-depth exploration. Complementary management refers to the management of complementary assets. In the high-technology field with intense technology catching-up competition, such as air passenger aircraft, focal firms need to establish an innovation ecosystem of cross organizational large-scale collaboration to achieve product innovation, especially to regard specialized complementary assets as key resources. Although some scholars focus on the identification, creation and management of complementary assets, the research on the relationship between innovation ecosystem and complementary management and in-depth identification are relatively insufficient. Aviation complex product innovation involves extremely complex system engineering from pre-research, project establishment, R&D, testing, production integration and delivery application. Its essence is whether effective complementary management can be achieved to continuously promote the development of its innovation ecosystem. For example, the development of C919 large passenger aircraft from scratch is because of the complementary assets. It is well-known that the creation and use of complementary assets need to be managed made effectively. However, the innovation challenge of complementary assets in the process of research, development and application and how to manage them are hidden in a black box.#br#Taking Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) C919 large passenger aircraft as an example, this paper makes a deep analysis of how focal firms can effectively manage complementary assets to resolve the challenges of complex product innovation and promote the development of its innovation ecosystem. On the one hand, the study tries to identify the types of complementary assets in the research, development and application stages of the complex product innovation ecosystem and the innovation challenges; on the other hand, it constructs a complex product innovation ecosystem by summarizing and refining the complementary management process model for focal firms of complex products.#br#The main findings of this study are as follows. Firstly, the complementary assets of the complex product innovation ecosystem include detailed design technology in the research phase, subcontracted products in the development phase, and delivery and operation services in the application phase. Secondly, different types of complementary assets are confronted with the innovative challenges such as the contradictions between closure and synergy, control and flexibility, and security and economy. Finally, in order to resolve these challenges, the core firms have constructed complementary management mechanisms through mutual adaptation between strategic intention and organizational structures, and further promoted the complex product innovation ecosystem from a single research community to multilateral communities of research, development and application.#br#In summary this paper makes three main contributions. Firstly, it enriches the connotation of complementary assets in the existing literature focusing on the application of product commercialization, and further expands the research scope of complementary assets in the existing theory that only focuses on general products. Secondly,the challenges are resolved through the mutual adaptation mechanism between the focal firms' strategic intention and organizational structure based on the ecological situation of complex product innovation, and the black box of complementary management is then opened. Finally, the study discusses complex product innovation from the three major innovation processes of research, development and application rather than the main level, revealing that the sustainability of the innovation ecosystem can not be separated from the complementary management of focal firms. Meanwhile, it also has important reference values for core firms to improve the technological innovation capability of complex products and realize the bottleneck breakthrough.#br#The follow-up study will take the ARJ21 regional aircraft as the case study object, and focus on the complementary asset management mechanism and other issues in the commercialization stage of complex product innovation from a more microscopic perspective. Meanwhile the method of cross-case comparative analysis with aerospace, high-speed rail and other enterprises is recommended for statistical confirmation to determine the constraints of the complementary asset management process model of the core enterprises in the complex product innovation ecosystem.#br#
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Received: 31 August 2022
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