Leverage Innovation Capability

The following sections are included:

• Preface

• Contents

In most cases, enterprises do not have sufficient resources to implement a great amount of innovative activities because it is usually constrained by its capital and scale in the very beginning. Therefore, an enterprise usually focuses on improvements from particular perspectives. The question “How to become an innovative firm?” becomes a very tough problem. This book attempts to summarize a general innovative path seen from several innovative firms, and search for key innovation elements in different innovation stages by analyzing the innovation status and innovation path of some innovative firms…

The SMEs account for more than 99% of the total numbers of national firms. They contribute about 60% of GDP and about 40% tax revenues. Simultaneously, about 75% employments are provided by SMEs. The development of SMEs is very important, especially, in the conditions of a transition in the economy…

The following sections are included:

• THE IMPORTANCE OF INNOVATION CAPABILITY IN SMEs

• TOTAL INNOVATION CAPABILITIES (TICs)

• RESEARCH DESIGN: A SURVEY
  • Data Collection
  • Variables and Measurements
  • Sample Categorization

• EMPIRICAL RESULTS AND FINDINGS
  • TICs of SMEs
  • Understanding and Perceived Usefulness of Government Innovation Policies
  • Perceived Effects of Government Innovation Policies

• DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

• REFERENCES

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play the key roles in the development of the national economy. Under the condition of economy transformation in China, how to leverage SME’s innovative capacity is of great importance. Taking Total Innovation Management (TIM) theory as the fundamental framework and basing on China’s situation, this study attempts to explore the mechanism and pathway on which to leverage SME’s innovation capability.

The following sections are included:

• ELEMENTS FOR CAPABILITY LEVERAGING IN SMEs

• COMPARISON OF TIM FRAMEWORK BETWEEN SMEs AND LARGE-SIZED ENTERPRISES

• IMPLEMENTATION MODELS OF TIM IN SMEs

• FACTORS AND ENABLERS OF INNOVATION CAPABILITY IN SMEs
  • Total Elements Innovation Strategy
  • Enforcing Basic Innovation Capability Strategy
  • Innovative Talents Development Strategy

• MECHANISM OF LEVERAGING INNOVATION CAPABILITY IN SMEs
  • Vision and Strategy
  • Management of Technology and Innovation
  • Market Orientation and Innovation
  • Organization Innovation
  • Innovation Networks
  • Culture Innovation
  • Knowledge Management and Creativity
  • Entrepreneurs

• SUMMARY

• REFERENCES

In many SMEs, the main problem that hinders the leverage of innovation capability is strategic dissonance. That is, organizational structure and corporate culture cannot fit with strategy, which block the innovation capability leveraging process in many SMEs…

The following sections are included:

• INCREASING ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION AND ITS MANAGEMENT

• MECHANISM AND FUNCTION OF TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION AND ITS MANAGEMENT
  • Harnessing Capability Base by Technology and Knowledge Accumulation
  • Building Core Competence by Integration
  • Adjusting Structure of Technology by Strategy Orientation
  • Enhancing Market Advantage by User Innovation
  • Optimizing Resource Allocation and Utilization by Organization
  • Incentive System to Explore Latent Capacity

• INTEGRAL FRAMEWORK OF TECHNOLOGY AND ITS MANAGEMENT

• CASE ILLUSTRATION
  • Overview of the Two Enterprises
  • Characteristics of Technology Innovation and its Management
  • Summary

• DISCUSSION

• REFERENCES

Organization is the collection of physical and human resources. All the resources are used for the organizational commission achievement. An enterprise is a kind of organization for profit. As a result, all the resources should be used effectively and efficiently. However, it is not enough for an enterprise to use resources effectively and efficiently when facing a dynamic environment. Innovation may provide a means for an enterprise to gain competitive advantage in the dynamic environment.

This chapter will discuss organization innovation, which is taken as a major means to leverage SME’s innovation capability. An organization is always described from three aspects – structure, process and institution. Consequently, the three aspects will be discussed in the following sections.

Innovation capability is the key to sustained and rapid development of firms, especially for small and medium enterprises. There are many factors influencing enterprises’ innovation capability. From the perspective of market orientation, based on the lack of the research about the relationship between market orientation and innovation capability, according to the actual situation, this study explored how market orientation improved innovation capability in SMEs. The research findings about the mechanism of promoting innovation capability based on the market orientation culture and some related elements are as follows: core technology research, building business models, differentiation strategy and the effective use of user innovation. Then this research analyzes the fitting factors for the implementation of market orientation.

This chapter is about how to leverage innovation capability via all-involvement innovation (AII) and corporate culture, which are important elements of TIM. In this chapter, many case studies were employed during the research.

SMEs have played an important role in economic prosperity. In 2008, the financial crisis had a great impact on the development of SMEs which typically operate in high-velocity markets while being constrained by limited resources. Take Zhejiang Province for example, up to February 2009, among 46,710 surveyed enterprises, 6.65% of them partially stopped production, while 2.06% of them shut down. In this harsh environment, how SMEs survive and keep a sustainable development becomes the focus of entrepreneurs, governors and scholars…

Open innovation has been proposed as new paradigms for the management of innovation and it is gaining grounds in many academies and industries. The role of the networks as a main model of open innovation is a powerful base to foster innovation in companies and industry-wide. (Chesbrough, 2003; Vrande, 2009; Chi, 2009). “….New models of innovation have suggested that many innovative firms have changed the way they search for new ideas, adopting open search strategies to help them achieve and sustain innovation” (Laursen and Salter, 2006). The traditional linear model from research and development as a basis of innovations is thus shifting to a model with a wide network of sources and partners integrating complementary competencies. Especially the downturn will push firms to adopt more networked approaches to innovation (Leadbeater et al., 2008). As described in the previous section (see Chapter 5), mainstream of innovation in SMEs is becoming more open, and they are practicing extensive networking activities.

In a word, openness causes great changes in the innovation landscape in recent years. Accordingly, the spatial and temporal scope of innovative working and organization in networks has changed dramatically, such as structure, culture, activity and so on. All these indicate that a broader and more comprehensive approach to innovation will be required for future success. In this section, we will explore the mechanism to leverage innovation capability via networks and all time-space innovation. Firstly, an integration of framework to study the dynamics of networks is proposed based on literature review. Secondly, we analyze different strategic pathways to leverage competence in SMEs by innovation networks. Thirdly, mechanism to leverage competence by internal-external networks co-evolution is explored. Besides that, implications for globalization via all timespace are also discussed.

Interrelated enterprises gathering together in a cluster can share their resources and strengths to overcome the lack of innovation resource for a single enterprise. Resource sharing cannot be separated from cluster innovation environment. Clusters provide the infrastructure, knowledge, talents, technology sharing environment, and etc. (Zhang and Li, 2008), which help to enhance the technical capacity and improve innovation performance…

The following sections are included:

• NECESSITY OF SPECIFIC INNOVATION POLICY ON CHINESE SMEs

• MAIN INNOVATION POLICY FOR CHINESE SMEs
  • Promoting the Non-technical Innovation of SMEs
  • Build Open Innovation System and Integrate External Resources for SMEs

• PROVIDE THE DIRECT SUPPORT FOR SMEs

• REFERENCES

This paper consists of Case Studies:

• Case A – Sunyard System Engineering Co., Ltd. (Sunyard)

• Case B – Hangzhou Focused Photonics Inc. (FPI)

• Case C – Hangzhou Honyar Electric Appliance Co., Ltd. (Honyar)

• Case D – Fujian Haiyuan Automatic Equipment(s) Co., Ltd. (Haiyuan)

• Case E – SUPCON Group Co., Ltd. (SUPCON)

• Case F – Jinfuchun Group Co., Ltd. (Jinfuchun)

• Case G – QP Textile Chemical Industry Holding Corporation (QP)

• Case H – Uni-Power Guaranty in Zhejiang Province (UPG)

• Case I – Hangzhou "R&D Design" Corporation ("R&D Design")

• Case J – Randv.com: Reality and Virtuality

• Activities of RCID Project Team

The following sections are included:

• Index