Contributions to a new innovation model: evidence from China

Building on a body of new works (Fu, 2015; Greeven, Yip and Wei, 2019), this thesis focuses on three topics as critical parts of a new innovation model. The global digital economy grew to US$31.8 trillion in 2019 (CAICT, 2020) providing the basis for a new innovation model whose core includes ‘Online Interactive Innovation’ [OII]. The first study examines how OII constitutes ‘virtual teamwork’ where employees interact with millions of customers online. OII helps firms to collect and adopt many valuable suggestions from customers to design new functions, update appliances’ operating systems, enhance customers’ experience, file patent applications and increase product shipments. OII has advantages and works across different industries (e.g., Xiaomi in smartphones, Tesla in electrical vehicles and Haier in home appliances) and countries (e.g., India and Spain). Since the individual is the basic unit to create new ideas for innovation (Taylor and Greve, 2006), the second study analyses 2,078 employees joining 3,976 value engineering projects over 6.5 years and explores how education, via the chain relationship, influences employees’ innovation performances measured by comprehensive indicators with triangulation. The third study focuses on how employee stock ownership plans [ESOPs] can activate employees, solve corporate governance problems and improve firms’ innovation performance. Analysing 1,509 Chinese listed firms in 9 years, it finds that ESOP influence firms’ innovation performance positively measured by annual patent application numbers and group effects exist at the level of industry. The impacts of ESOP in knowledge/talent-intensive industries are significant while not for other industries, which determines the different influences of various stock boards and locations of firms’ headquarters. The impact of ESOP on innovation is more significant in SOEs than non-SOEs. These three studies rigorously demonstrate distinct features of innovation that have come to characterize leading practices. These hold implications for practice and future research