Technological Innovation Research in China and India: A Bibliometric Analysis for the Period 1991–2015

Chinese Firms’ Acquisition of Innovation Capability from Overseas: Approaches by State- versus Private-Owned Firms

Through two in-depth case studies, we compare the approaches of a state-owned enterprise (SOE), Beijing Automotive Industries Holding Co., and a privately owned enterprise (POE), Geely, to acquire and absorb advanced technological knowledge to enhance their innovation capabilities. Each company acquired advanced knowledge from troubled famous Swedish automakers and upgraded their products technologically. Analyzing data mainly collected from secondary sources identifies major differences in approaches and actions at each acquisition step rooted in the type of ownership. We juxtapose these differences with insights from the literature on knowledge acquisition and research on firm ownership. Our findings show that the POE seeks the strategic goal of synergistic technology integration for better innovation and economic performance. In contrast, the SOE pursues national objectives with less regard for market success. This SOE focuses on an independent approach to knowledge absorption and development during their acquisition, whereas the POE emphasizes collaboration in innovation capacity development. This study provides insights into Chinese firms’ positioning on innovation development on the global stage, comparative capitalism, and the particular case of state capitalism in China.

How Technological Innovation Affect China's Pharmaceutical Smart Manufacturing Industrial Upgrading

In recent years, a new generation of information technology has provided sufficient technical support for the smart manufacturing industry. In order to promote the upgrading of China's pharmaceutical smart manufacturing industry, the direction of industrial upgrading and transformation will be discussed from the perspective of technological innovation. According to the input and output data of technological innovation in China's pharmaceutical manufacturing industry from 2007 to 2019, the DEA method is used to analyze the allocation of innovative resources in China's pharmaceutical manufacturing industry in recent years. The study found that the efficiency of technological innovation in China's pharmaceutical manufacturing industry fluctuated greatly from 2007 to 2019, with a low overall level and varying degrees of wasted resources. On this basis, an in-depth analysis of the system architecture of the pharmaceutical smart manufacturing industry under the Industry 4.0 environment was performed. Finally, four paths for the digital transformation of China's pharmaceutical manufacturing industry are proposed. Chinese pharmaceutical manufacturing companies need to use new technologies to carry out comprehensive intelligent upgrading and digital transformation to improve innovation efficiency.

Technology Decomposition and Technology Recombination in Industrial Catch-up for Large Emerging Economies: Evidence from Chinese Manufacturing Industries

The influence of technological learning on industry-level catch-up has long drawn substantial attention in the catch-up research field. However, the underlying mechanisms of technological learning and the unique catch-up context in large emerging economies are much less explored. To explain the technological learning processes of latecomers that face the technology gap and strive to build differentiated competitive advantage, this study builds on the absorptive capacity perspective and deconstructs technological learning processes into two mechanisms: technology decomposition and technology recombination. The former entails decomposing advanced technologies into pieces, parts, or modules, while the latter entails the process of capturing market opportunities through recombining knowledge from diverse sources into commercial products through localized innovations and adaptations. Then, we propose a unique ‘ladder-like’ catch-up context (i.e., technology ladder and market ladder) and investigate how the technological learning process and the unique catch-up context jointly affect industrial catch-up performance in China. Using seven-year panel data from Chinese manufacturing industries, the results indicate that only technology recombination has a significantly positive relationship with industrial catch-up performance. In addition, the market ladder strengthens the positive impact of technology recombination on industrial catch-up, while the technology ladder weakens the positive impact of technology decomposition on catch-up.

Multinational enterprises and the governance of sustainability practices in emerging market supply chains: An agile governance perspective

Advanced economy multinational enterprises (AMNEs) face idiosyncratic challenges related to the governance of their sustainability practices in their emerging market supply chains. One way for AMNEs to address these challenges would be by adopting agile sustainability governance mechanisms. Drawing on the theories of experimentalist governance and deliberation, we propose a processual framework suited to develop agile sustainability governance mechanisms. We explore the challenges to supplier participation and the factors that enable an authentic dialogue in the process. We contribute to the scholarship on transnational governance and strategic agility, and offer practical implications which are also relevant for disruptions like COVID-19.

Depth vs. Breadth: Network Strategy in Emerging Markets

Using survey data from China and India, we explore the impact of network strategy of new ventures in emerging markets. We focus on two critical dimensions of network strategy, namely, broadening and deepening the network and two types of knowledge: market knowledge and technological knowledge. We find that proactive network deepening is associated with market knowledge and network broadening with technological knowledge. From a network perspective, our work highlights the counterintuitive outcomes of breadth versus depth orientation in network strategy, highlighting differences between advanced and emerging economies. We use a post-hoc multi-group analysis to show the differences even within the two emerging markets: India and China. The direct effect of partnering proactiveness on market knowledge in India is significantly higher than that in China but there is no significant difference as to the effect of technological knowledge. We use this exploratory study to highlight the opportunities for network and entrepreneurship scholars to study emerging markets and, in particular, undertake comparative studies between new ventures in China and India.

Knowledge Sources and International Business Activity in a Changing Innovation Ecosystem: A Study of the Indian Pharmaceutical Industry

The Indian pharmaceutical industry has experienced rapid growth, becoming the world's largest provider of generic drugs, based on product and process innovation. The industry has undergone dynamic changes in recent decades, operating in a rapidly evolving environment affected by domestic and global policies; a key example of the latter is the TRIPS agreement. Taking an intellectual property perspective, we describe how changes in the innovation ecosystem have affected companies’ strategies related to international activity and accessing knowledge from both internal and external knowledge sources, during the transitional- and post-TRIPS periods (1995–2004 and 2005–2014, respectively). Combining intellectual property arguments with contextual aspects of the innovation ecosystem, we conjecture that, in the post-TRIPS period, externally-sourced knowledge will be more important than internally-sourced knowledge, for Indian pharmaceutical firms’ international business activity.