Research on the Relationship Among Dual Open Innovation, Social Ties and New Product Market Performance

Abstract

With the increasing competition in the market and the reduction of product lifecycle, “open innovation” has become the dominant approach for increasing a company’s new product market performance. Social ties are the important external social capital of enterprises, which play key roles for enterprises maintaining advantages in the fierce competition environment. Under dual open innovation model, enterprises’ network mainly involves business ties, government ties and university ties. Based on social capital theory, this article discusses the mediating mechanism of university ties, government ties, business ties in the process of dual open innovation influence new product market performance. We initially selected a random sample of 400 firms from 18 cities in East and Mid-China from a registration list of the local industrial and commercial bureau. In total, we had 270 valid questionnaires. Results show that both inbound and outbound open innovation openness have positive effect on business ties, government ties and university ties. Business ties and university ties have significant positive effect on new product market performance. Through the test of mediating effect, we found that the influence of inbound open innovation openness on new product market performance need to be played through business ties and university ties, the influence of outbound open innovation openness on new product market performance need to be played through business ties.

Keywords: open innovation; business ties; government ties; university ties; new product market performance