沈曦-创新管理-英文.doc

Enterprise Technological Innovation and Its Mode Selection -Changchun Railway Vehicles Limiteds Road of InnovationSHEN Xi1. Theories of Enterprise Technological InnovationThe enterprise-based technological innovation is not only the key part of a national and even a regional innovation system, but also the inherent dynamism to promote economic growth, enhance the quality and level of economy, and promote the transformation and upgrading of industrial structure. Whether technological innovation can play the above roles (whether individual enterprise or enterprise groups) heavily lays in whether its selected innovation strategy is proper or not. If the selection is right, then the general direction would not be wrong, and the quality, level, frequency and sustainability of technological innovation would be high; otherwise, it will get half the results with double the effort, and it may cause difficulties which are hard to be solved. Therefore, the selection of enterprise technological innovation strategy is a key issue.1.1. Foreign theories of technological innovationWith regard to the technological innovation, the following are the theories and views of foreign representative scholars:J. A. Schumpeter is the first one who used the term of “innovation” in the 20th century, and proposed that the innovation is a process. In his book ofThe Business Cycle, he (1939) proposes the comprehensive theory of innovation, and first puts forward the innovation is an independent variable that impacts on economic growth and social change, but he did not conduct the research on technological innovation, because innovation itself is not the study object for Schumpeter. S.C. Solo presented the theory that the formation of technological innovation is dependent on the new ideas and the realization and development of the post stage in 1950s, and he carried out the study on the technological innovation for the first time, which is known as the first milestone of the study on technological innovation.In 1960s, J. L. Enos defined the technological innovation from the behavior collection perspective as follows: “technological innovation is the result of several behaviors. These behaviors include the choice of the invention, the capital investment guarantee, the establishment of organizations, planning, employment and the development of markets.” While G. Lynn defines the technological innovation from the perspective of the innovation timing process as follows: technological innovation begins with the understanding of the commercial potential of technologies and the whole behavioral process that transforming it into the fully commercialized product. U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has gradually expanded the interpretation of technological innovation in the 1960s to 1970s, such as its definition on technological innovation in 1976 is technological innovation refers to the introduction of new or improved products, processes or services into the market, which clearly puts the imitated technology and the technology that does not need to introduce the new technical knowledge in the range of technological innovation as two types of innovations at the lowest level.1.2. Technological innovation theories of ChinaBased on the actual conditions of China, Institute of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University is the first one who proposed the Chinese definition of technological innovation: Technological innovation refers to entrepreneurs seize the potential opportunities in markets, take commercial benefits as the goal, re-organize production conditions and factors, and establish more effective production and management systems at lower costs, so as to launch new products and new production (process) methods, develop new markets, gain new sources of supply of raw materials or semi-finished products, or create new business organizations. It is an integrated process which includes science and technology, organization, business, finance and other activities. The official definition was made in the National Technology Innovation Assembly in 1998, which argues that technological innovation refers to enterprises applies innovative knowledge & new technologies, new processes, new production methods and management models, to improve product quality, to develop new products, to provide new services, to seize markets, and to realize the market value.”The above definitions can be understood from the following three areas:a. The technological innovation is different from the invention, the former is the economic behavior, while the latter is the scientific and technological behavior, and an invention is only a new concept, a new idea, and a testing product. Technological innovation introduces innovations and other scientific and technological achievements into production and uses their principles to produce the goods needed by the market.b. Technological innovation is a process which begins with research and development and ends when the mercerization is realized. Such as the introduction of technologies which usually is not technically innovative. In order to make it into the products that enterprises could achieve, it still needs to carry out development work, through the marketing link (namely market innovation), the technological innovation can be finally realized.c. Technological innovation has the quality of quasi-public products”. The imitation and diffusion of technological innovation is the representation of the spillover effect of the innovation benefits. Technological innovation naturally has the technical barriers to imitation objects at different degrees, which gives certain exclusion to innovative enterprises. This shows that the spread and imitation of technological innovation has certain costs, the co-existence of its externality and exclusion has provided the technological innovation with features of quasi-public products.2. Types and Analysis of Enterprise Technological Innovation Strategies2.1. Mode analysis of Technological innovationIf enterprises want to carry out the technological innovation, there are mainly three kinds of options of strategies: a. Independent innovation. Enterprises mainly rely on their own technologies to carry out research and development, to realize the commercialization of scientific and technological achievements, and to achieve the desired economic benefits. Independent innovation requires enterprises to have strong research and development capabilities and research results accumulated, and to take a leading position of technology in a particular area. In terms of technological level of enterprises in China, besides a small number of enterprises or some certain areas, the technological innovation capability is still very poor.b. Innovation imitating. It refers to that under the inducement of demonstration effects and benefits of innovations, enterprises import technologies through legal means, and it is the innovative form of improving the original technologies. A wise choice is to achieve high-quality imitation, and to be innovative in the process of imitation.c. Cooperative innovation. It is a kind of innovation organization form that promotes innovation by the enterprise-based cooperation between enterprise and enterprise, enterprise and research institute or university. The premise of the cooperative innovation is that all parties share the results of cooperation and conduct common development. Through the cooperative innovation, enterprises with competitive relation and conflicts of interest can be united, and all parties can gain benefits in the cooperative competition and seek for development. For example, the cooperative innovation system of government, industry, academia, and research in China is an important part of the establishment of the national innovation system.The principles of the mode selection of technological innovation2.1.1. Complying with corporate strategy objectivesTechnological innovation mode must always focus on the enterprise business strategy objectives and meet their requirements. Technological innovation is an important means to achieve corporate business objectives, what kind of technological innovation mode is adopted is an important component of the corporate business strategy. If the mode of technological innovation is not in line with the requirements of business strategies, there will be situations like “going south by driving the chariot north”, which is not only a waste of resources, but also will get half the results with double the effort.2.1.2. Industry statusIndustry status is an important factor for the mode selection of enterprise technological innovation, there are several measurable indicators: a. The characteristics of industrial organization, namely the characteristics of the industrial market structure relationship, and it can be characterized by the market concentration and barriers to entry. Market concentration refers to the monopoly degree of the enterprise product market, and the strategy choice of enterprise in such market depends largely on the position of enterprise in the market under the given degree of monopoly. The high or low barrier to entry not only reflects the existing enterprise advantage size in the market, but also reflects the barrier size encountered by the newly entered enterprises. If the barrier to entry is weak, most enterprises will adopt imitation strategies to enter the market.b. Characteristics of industry technical phase. The mode selection of enterprise technological innovation is closely related to different stages of development of its related industries. In embryonic stage of the industry lifecycle, because there is no existing technology to be imitated, most of the stronger enterprises adopted the independent innovation model, while the relatively weaker enterprises which want to obtain first-mover advantages tend to adopt collaborative innovation model, the competition for the leading design of major product innovations often occur: in the growth stage of industry lifecycle, the industry was developing rapidly, some enterprises began to make profits, but in order to pursue lower costs, enterprises must continue to carry out research and development, enterprises should adopt the independent development model, on one hand, they should continue to carry out product development, on the other hand, they should implement technical barriers to prevent the outflow of new technologies. At this point, some enterprises have adopted the follower strategy or imitation strategy to enter into such market; in the mature stage of the industry lifecycle, more and more enterprises adopted the imitative innovation to enter into the field, progressive process innovations have continuously reduced costs; in the recession of industry lifecycle, many enterprises adopted the retreat strategy, and shifted to carry out technological innovation and develop new areas.2.1.3. Selected CombinationTechnological innovation mode should not be limited to a certain single mode. Based on the actual situation of enterprises, enterprises should adopt the complex mode of various innovation models.Independent innovation mode refers to enterprises obtain technical breakthrough through independent research and development activities on their own strength, in order to enable the enterprises to master and control core technologies of some certain products or processes in a certain period of time. Therefore, the enterprises which adopt the mode of independent innovation shall have the following capabilities:Having a large amount of research and development investment and strong technological research and development capabilities; the technical departments of these enterprises have abilities to response promptly, to collaborate, and to quickly turn the research and development results into products; enterprises have strong marketing capabilities, and are able to quickly open up the market.While the enterprises that adopting the innovation imitating mode can learn from the successes and failures of innovators to an maximum extent, so as to absorb and inherit the results of innovators, to cleverly follow and delay the effects caused, to effectively avoid the losses caused by the silent market, and to avoid the risks of the market demand at early stage and uncertainties in market behaviors. All in all, the innovation imitating mode is the preference for most of enterprises to carry out technological innovation.If a cooperative innovation mode is adopted, it will help enterprises to develop their basic researches and applied researches which is featured by knowledge accumulation and help them to get close to universities or research institutions to carry out explorations of the cutting edge technologies, so as to make the enterprises have a good understanding of new technological developments and capture the new technical information. Enterprises in reality typically do not possess objective conditions of the implementation of a complete and separate mode of technological innovation, but they have main conditions for the implementation of several innovation modes. Therefore, based on the actual situations of enterprises, enterprises should choose the complex mode which includes a variety of innovation models, so that enterprises can make full use of existing resources, obtain advantages brought by a variety of innovation models, accelerate the pace of technological innovation, and effectively achieve business strategic objectives.3. Case Study3.1. Profile of Changchun Railway Vehicles Co., Ltd.The company was formerly known as Changchun Bus Factory, which was founded in 1954. It is one of 156 key construction projects during the national Five-year Plan period. After 50 years of construction and development, the company has become Chinas largest R&D, manufacture, and export base for passenger rail vehicles and urban rail vehicles. The company has been produced 27,000 passenger rail vehicles until now, which takes up 50% of the national passenger rail vehicles, and covers all of the Railway Administrations (Groups) and the local railway companies; its main products are railway passenger cars, EMUs, city railway passenger cars, vehicle accessories. The railway passenger cars includes 25B (low-grade slow cars), 25G (mid-grade medium-speed cars), 25T (high-grade fast cars) and so on. EMUs include high-speed EMUs and normal-speed EMUs. While the railway passenger cars and EMUs can be divided into carbon steel cars, stainless steel cars, and aluminum alloy cars based on the material of the body.Although the company has bright future, there is still a gap between the level of its product design and manufacturing technology and the advanced world level, the company still can not perfectly meet the demands of security, advancement and mature, master worl