External knowledge search has become a key part of manufacturing enterprises' innovation activities, both in high-tech sectors that are more open to innovation and low and medium technology sectors with lower technology intensity. When manufacturing enterprises cannot rely solely on internal resources for innovation, they begin to search for and leverage knowledge from outside, integrate external knowledge with their knowledge base, and utilize knowledge inflow to accelerate internal innovation and then expand the market for external use of innovation. Therefore, the external knowledge search strategy of manufacturing enterprises represents an important non-pecuniary mode of inbound open innovation. When they meet difficulty in reaching the complexity required for new product production, they will seek to cooperate with the outside to obtain external knowledge resources and establish knowledge linkages with suppliers, customers, universities, research institutions and competitor to achieve economies of scale and scope, and then respond quickly to market changes.
Manufacturing enterprises' different motives to carry out external knowledge acquisition will lead to variability in the demand for the combination of external knowledge inputs, and the enterprises will choose an appropriate combination of search strategies that is consistent with needs. Existing studies pay less attention to the innovation activities of manufacturing enterprises that benefit most from knowledge search strategies, i. e. , the propensity to choose open search strategies in their innovation activities. On the basis of a deep analysis of the existing literature, three propositions related to the relationship between innovation activities and knowledge search strategies are proposed from the perspectives of knowledge acquisition motivation, formal/informal cooperation relationships, and knowledge protection. In terms of research methodology, this paper uses the hierarchical clustering method and then establishes a multinomial logistic regression model to construct a theoretical research framework on the relationship between innovation activities and external knowledge search strategies, and conducts an empirical study based on the World Bank's innovation survey for Chinese manufacturing enterprises as the data source. 〖HJ*2/7〗
The results of the study show that knowledge search strategies can be classified into minimal search, search along the supply chain, multi-path search, science-specific search, technology-specific search, and overall balanced search. Manufacturing enterprises might focus on internal R&D or might be more open in their innovation activities, and firms might choose one single knowledge search strategy or a combination of multiple knowledge search strategies, which is consistent with Proposition 1. The results also confirm that manufacturing enterprises prefer formal knowledge sources in technological innovation activities, acquiring knowledge related to technology, market and product knowledge ("search along the supply chain"), while in process innovation activities, they tend to acquire knowledge from both formal and informal sources, such as frontier scientific knowledge ("science-specific search"). The tendency of manufacturing enterprises to choose "search along the supply chain" in a variety of technological innovation activities suggests that firms can search along the upstream or downstream of the traditional value chain. The suppliers usually have specialized knowledge related to components, while the customers can obtain sticky information about customer needs, background and experience, which is helpful to identify new market opportunities and trends. Manufacturing enterprises might tighten their open search behaviors and choose close search or a single knowledge search strategy in their innovation activities, which confirms proposition 3. The behavior of external knowledge search is sometimes more "open" and sometimes "very conservative". For example, when reducing production costs, manufacturing enterprises might be more conservative and adopt the minimal search strategy;while when providing technical training for employees, they are more likely to adopt the search strategy of science-specific search, and universities have the advantage in knowledge dissemination and talent training. In order to prevent knowledge spillover, manufacturing enterprises might tighten their search behaviors and tend to acquire knowledge from a single source. The openness of external knowledge search depends on the trade-off and consideration of knowledge demand and protection.
The results of the study corroborate the validity of the previous propositions and provide new ideas in this field by preliminarily exploring the issue of to what extent different natures and types of innovation activities affect the propensity to choose external knowledge search strategies. It provides an insight into the open knowledge search strategy of manufacturing enterprises in practice.
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