Gupeng Zhang

The impact of small world on patent productivity in China

Based on the patent co-authorship data from State Intellectual Property Office of China, this paper examines the evolution of small world network and its impact on patent productivity in China. Compared with the western countries, the small-world phenomenon of the innovation network in China is becoming more obvious. Empirical result shows that the small world network may only have significant impact on patent productivity in those patent productive provinces, e.g., Beijing and Guangdong that filed larger number of patents. Although the collaborations in the network are more endurable in China than ones in western countries, it may be less efficient in transmitting knowledge because of large ratio of administration oriented state owned enterprises (SOEs). With larger ratio of SOEs, the small world network has longer path length and knowledge thus flows less efficiently in Beijing than in Guangdong. The policy implication of the findings lies in that the Chinese government should let the market rather than the administration determine the collaboration of technological innovation, in order to encourage innovation and establish an effective small world network for speeding up flow of knowledge among different type of firms during the innovative process.

How do prolific inventors impact firm innovation in ICT: implications from patent co-inventing network

Prolific inventors not only own higher innovation productivity, but also impact other inventors through innovation networks. This paper contributes to existing literatures by differentiating prolific inventors from non-prolific inventors in the network context, and making an empirical analysis of the effect of prolific inventors. We use the patent filing data from the State Intellectual Property Office of China (SIPO) in investigating the effect of prolific inventors on firm innovation. We use the patents filed by 10 largest Information & Communication Technology firms during 1995–2010 and establish the innovation network with patent co-inventing data. The empirical result shows that prolific inventors positively impact their partners who used to co-invent at least one patent with them. Furthermore, prolific inventors positively impact inventors who do not have a close contact with them. The closer the inventors are to prolific inventors, the more patents they produce. Members are thereby more likely to gather around prolific inventors and formulate intensive clusters. In networks centered by prolific inventors, useful knowledge outweighs redundant knowledge, and high clustering that facilitates knowledge flow is proved to be beneficial; while in networks without prolific inventors, high clustering may not be beneficial as there are less inventors holding advanced knowledge. Policy implications are discussed at the end of this study.

Gini index estimation for lifetime data

Lifetime data is often right-censored. Recent literature on the Gini index estimation with censored data focuses on independent censoring. However, the censoring mechanism is likely to be dependent censoring in practice. This paper proposes two estimators of the Gini index under independent censoring and covariate-dependent censoring, respectively. The proposed estimators are consistent and asymptotically normal. We also evaluate the performance of our estimators in finite samples through Monte Carlo simulations. Finally, the proposed methods are applied to real data.

Small Worldliness, Chinese Culture and Firm Innovation Performance: An Empirical Study based on Patent Collaboration Data of China

China is an Asian country that has a more collectivist culture compared with that of western countries. Furthermore, China is also different from other Asian countries and regions, for example, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, in terms of the social and political context. The small-world network thereby plays quite a different role in innovation in China. This paper expands on the existing studies by examining the impact of the small-world network on firm innovation performance using both quantity and quality measurements. With the intra-firm level patent collaboration data from China, we find that a more clustered patent collaboration network has a negative impact on firm innovation performance. Patent collaboration networks with greater small worldliness would harm firm innovation performance in China, which is quite different from the role played by small worldliness in western and other Asian countries. The path length has a negative impact, and the size of the connected component has a positive impact on firm innovation, which is similar to the role of small-world networks in western and other Asian countries. Our finding is suggestive to the firm managers who face the collectivist culture of China, which has greater emphasis on hierarchy and bureaucracy.

Balancing China’s climate damage risk against emission control costs

In this study, we incorporate a three-reservoir climate module into our energy-economy-environmental integrated (3E-integrated) system model, in order to estimate the effect of China’s contribution of unilateral emissions on global warming and to weigh the macro-mitigation cost against the risk of damage, and we also explore the role of adaptation in reducing climate change risk. Our results suggest that China’s unilateral emission-control action plays a relatively limited role in mitigating global warming and is not particularly cost-effective, given that the macro-reduction cost is much larger than the benefit in the corresponding climate damage mitigation. Adaptation plays a large role in curbing China’s climate damages and improving the economics of China’s unilateral emission-control actions, and it is little affected by the introduction and option mitigation strategies. To prevent global warming from exceeding critical thresholds, more international collaborations and cooperative efforts are therefore anxiously needed; as for China, bolstering a low-carbon economy and installing an effective mechanism for improving the adaptation level are two feasible options for controlling climate damage risks, given the great uncertainty on the present situation of international cooperation mitigation.

Organizational forgetting, absorptive capacity, and innovation performance: A moderated mediation analysis

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how the organizational forgetting affect innovation performance under the consideration of the environmental turbulence as a moderating factor of the analysis framework. Design/methodology/approach This study constructs and verifies a moderated mediating model of organizational forgetting to innovation performance, using the exploratory factor analysis and the hierarchical regression analysis based on a survey sample of 320 Chinese companies. Findings The organizational forgetting is a critical determinants for improving innovation performance of an enterprise. A more detailed analysis reveals that first organizational forgetting can not promote organization’s innovation performance without absorptive capacity. Second, the mediating effect of absorptive capacity is more positive when environmental turbulence is higher. Practical implications This study provides empirical evidence about the importance of organizational forgetting in the firm innovation. Origi...

How does firm size affect technology licensing? Empirical evidence from China

Technology licensing is viewed as the key factor for activating the sleeping patents. This study re-examines the relationship between the firm size and its technology licensing activity. The empirical results show that there is a U-shaped relationship between the firm size and technology licensing. However, this U-shaped relationship appears only in the markets with high competition, which confirms a moderate role of the technology competition in the relationship between the firm size and technology licensing. Chinese firms lag behind developed countries in terms of the licensing strategies. e.g., Chinese firms have fewer patents that are cross licensed. China’s export-oriented firms show relatively more positive licensing propensity, where large, small and medium sized firms do not show essentially different willingness to license out their patents compared with non export-oriented firms. China’s state owned firms are less likely to license out their patents compared with that of private firms. Policy implications are presented at the end of this study.

Is a stable and connective network important to innovation

With the patent co-inventing data of top 9 ICT firms with the highest patent application in China, this study establishes the co-inventing network and examines the moderate role of network connectivity, measured by classifying the individuals into two cohorts: inventors in the largest connected component and inventors in other isolated components. The network stability and innovation output demonstrate strong positive interactions, which is significant in not only the largest but also other isolated components. The clustering and centrality demonstrate significant effect on network stability and innovation output in the largest connected component, which is generally the same as that of extant studies. This impact is not significant in the other isolated components, which confirms the moderate role of network connectivity, i.e., fully connected networks constitute the basis for the network structure to be functioning. However, the significantly positive role of the structural hole is not moderated by the network connectivity. We discuss the contributions and implications of our findings.

Patent-Information Based Study on Patenting Behavior in China

There are continual debates between economists, management scholars, practitioners, policy makers, and legal system researchers about the efficiency of the patent system. It is only fair to say that contributions of patents to local economies are mixed among different industrial sectors, geographical regions, and countries with different innovation encouraging policies.

Structure of Small World Innovation Network and Learning Performance

This paper examines the differences of learning performance of 5 MNCs (multinational corporations) that filed the largest number of patents in China. We establish the innovation network with the patent coauthorship data by these 5 MNCs and classify the networks by the tail of distribution curve of connections. To make a comparison of the learning performance of these 5 MNCs with differing network structures, we develop an organization learning model by regarding the reality as having dimensions, which denotes the heterogeneous knowledge about the reality. We further set innovative individuals that are mutually interactive and own unique knowledge about the reality. A longer (shorter) distance between the knowledge of the individual and the reality denotes a lower (higher) knowledge level of that individual. Individuals interact with and learn from each other within the small-world network. By making 1,000 numerical simulations and averaging the simulated results, we find that the differing structure of the small-world network leads to the differences of learning performance between these 5 MNCs. The network monopolization negatively impacts and network connectivity positively impacts learning performance. Policy implications in the conclusion section suggest that to improve firm learning performance, it is necessary to establish a flat and connective network.