C. C. Hang

Editorial Managing Innovation in Emerging Economies: An Introduction to the Special Issue

The 11 papers in this special issue focus on managing innovation in emerging economies. The papers cover a good spectrum of topics, methodology, industry as well as geographical location. Collectively they draw observations from Brazil, China, India, Philippines, South Africa, and Taiwan.

Technology licensing and innovation performance: evidence from Chinese latecomers in high-tech industries

As a catalyst for endogenous technological change, inward technology licensing (ITL) can improve a firm’s innovation performance. This paper investigates the effect of learning by licensing and choice of licensed-in technologies on innovation performance. We extend the ITL strategy to the latecomer context, addressing two critical factors: (1) number of licenses and (2) age of licensed-in technology. We hypothesize about the relationship of the licensee’s innovation performance with the number of licenses and age of licensed-in technology, as well as the moderating effect of the licensee’s absorptive capacity. Based on a sample of 154 Chinese high-tech firms, empirical evidence is found in support of our arguments. This study is the first to consider the significance of the age of licensed-in technology to innovation performance and found that the number of licenses has a curvilinear (an inverted U) relationship with innovation performance. We also confirmed the significant moderating effect of absorptive capacity on the above two relationships.

Key management processes to technology transfer success

The success rate of technology transfer from government laboratories is quite low. This paper combines findings from academic research to provide valuable managerial insights. We conclude that technology transfer factors identified so far actually relate to four management processes: project management, strategy management, innovation management, and relationship management.

An Assessment Framework for Disruptive Innovation

Although the disruptive innovation (DI) theory of Christensen has nowadays been accepted by academics and practitioners as a powerful innovation strategy, many have only viewed it from a particular perspective such as market development that is not sufficient to judge confidently if an early stage DI case has a good chance to succeed. In this paper, we shall present an assessment framework that captures the essential characteristics and holistic success factors for DI — they are grouped under market positioning, technology and other favorable drivers. Three well-known cases, namely the steel minimill of Nucor, the 3.5 inch disk drive of Conner/Seagate, and the limited mobile phone system/product of UTStarcom, are then presented to illustrate the use of this systematic framework in assessing the success potential of these cases of DI in either the low-end or new markets. A fourth example of Googles web-based office applications would then illustrate how the framework may be used to study the disruptive potential of a new product. The framework has the potential to be further developed into a systematic tool for answering the question of whether the DI Theory could indeed be used to provide ex ante prediction of the success of a new DI.

New insight into technology licensing strategy and innovation performance: Evidence from Chinese latecomers in high-tech industries

As a catalyst for endogenous technological change, inward technology licensing can improve firms innovation performance. This paper investigates the effect of learning by licensing and strategic choice of technology licensed in on subsequent innovation performance. We extend the inward technology licensing strategy to the latecomer context, addressing two critical factors: (1) number of licenses and (2) age of technology licensed in. We hypothesize about the relationship of the licensees innovation performance with number of licenses and age of technology licensed in, as well as the moderating effect of the licensees absorptive capability. Based on a sample of 154 Chinese firms from four high-tech industries, empirical evidence is found to support our arguments.

Disruptive Process Innovation in Semiconductor Industry

Firms concentrate more in capturing market by performing product innovations as their key strength. However the key to increase the market share is in their strategy: apart from enhancing the product performance they should concurrently focus in the process innovation, which involves in both technological and business processes. Earlier researches have shown disruptive innovation as a distinct difference from the continuous and radical innovation in product development. However in this study it is shown that it can be extended to process type innovation of high tech industries. For every product there is a close relationship between the product development and its manufacturing process, hence knowledge transfer and technology diffusion between the two teams is crucial to explore and exploit each others strength. Secondly, to enable process innovation, emphasis should be made to introduce the concept of modularity and flexibility in a products manufacturing process. Accordingly, this paper introduces a framework for concurrent product and process development that will help a firm to achieve a highest level in its competitive strategy.