The Strategic Fit of Firm Digital R&D Platform and R&D Innovation
Research and development(R&D)innovation currently plays a key role in driving the technological progress of our society,the high-quality economic development,and the self-reliance and self-strengthening in science and technology.However,our country has always faced issues and challenges in R&D innovation,such as"bottleneck"technologies,allocation of innovation resources,and information asymmetry.In the digital economy,building digital R&D platforms has become an emerging strategic measure for enterprises to break through R&D bottlenecks.Unfortunately,many cases have shown that enterprises'digital transformation(such as digital R&D)falls into a"digital trap,"and the practice of driving R&D innovation with a digital R&D platform strategy is highly complex,ambiguous,and uncertain.Therefore,this paper argues that it is urgent to conduct in-depth research on the relationship between digital R&D platform strategy and R&D innovation to provide forward-looking theoretical insights.Although scholars have studied the relationship between digital platforms and enterprise innovation,there are still theoretical gaps in the existing literature that need to be addressed:First,scholars have extensively discussed the relationship between digital platforms such as e-commerce platforms,social media platforms,and cloud computing platforms and enterprise innovation,but few have ventured into the study of digital R&D platforms.Second,scholars mainly view digital platform strategy as a comprehensive policy to study its impact on innovation,but overlook the different dimensions of strategy(such as integration and restructuring)and their differential impact on innovation.Finally,scholars mainly discuss the black box of how digital platform strategy affects enterprise innovation or performance but ignore the boundary conditions.Therefore,based on the strategic contingency theory,this study explores the integration and reconstruction strategies of digital R&D platforms and their impact on R&D innovation in different environmental and structural factors.By conducting polynomial regression and response surface analysis on two-stage data from 255 high-tech firms nationwide,this study obtained the following results:a high-consistency fit between integration and reconfiguration strategies is more conducive to promoting R&D innovation than a low-consistency fit.Moreover,consistent strategic fit is more beneficial for R&D innovation than inconsistent fit.Additionally,under varying conditions of environmental dynamism,environmental hostility,R&D partner leverage,and organizational alignment,the impact of inconsistent fits—high integration/low reconfiguration and low integration/high reconfiguration—on R&D innovation exhibits significant differences.The research results have the following theoretical contributions.First,by focusing on the research of digital R&D platform strategy,this paper expands the literature and theoretical perspectives related to digital platforms and R&D innovation.Second,this paper focuses on the strategic fit issues of digital R&D platforms under different environmental and structural influences.By proposing a theoretical framework for the impact of digital R&D platform strategy on R&D innovation and elaborating on the related conclusions of contingent fit,this paper provides new insights and evidence for the theory of the relationship between digital R&D platforms and R&D innovation.Finally,by introducing the theory of strategic contingency into the research of digital R&D platform strategy,this paper not only expands the explanatory scope and applicable scenarios of the theory of strategic contingency but also further refines the specific content of the theory,providing deeper theoretical insights into how digital R&D platforms adapt to and influence their environment and structure.The conclusions of this study provide the following implications for enterprises'digitalization and innovation practices:First,enterprises should build digital R&D platforms to provide a digital R&D environment for R&D innovation.Second,enterprises should focus on the synergy and fit of the integration strategy and restructuring strategy of digital R&D platforms.Finally,enterprises that cannot achieve strategic synergy need to adjust their strategic focus according to different environmental and structural elements.
digital R&D platformR&D innovationcontingency theorypolynomial regressionhigh-tech firms
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
