The Influencing Mechanism of Scientific and Technolog-ical Innovation Enterprises'Founder's Role Craft and Transition on Breakthrough Innovation
The report of the Party's 20th National Congress em-phasizes the importance of"accelerating the implementation of the innovation-driven development strategy"and"strengthening inno-vation support for small and medium-sized enterprises,and cultivat-ing more innovative enterprises with independent intellectual prop-erty rights and core competitiveness."Scientific and technological innovation enterprises play a crucial role in achieving independent innovation and supporting China's major strategies.As the founders of a scientific and technological innovation enterprise,their role craft and transition are pivotal to the enterprise's sustainable break-through innovation.However,the existing literature has overlooked the conditions,process,and outcomes of the role craft and transi-tion of such founders.In practice,there are numerous examples of founders leading to business failure due to inadequate management.Thus,it has become a strategic priority for enterprises to change the founders'roles to match the development stage of the enterprise.It is both practical and urgent to explore how the founders of scientific and technological enterprises craft and transform their roles and how they influence organizational breakthrough innovation from a theoretical perspective. Utilizing an exploratory case study of SinoGNSS Company by ComNav Technology Ltd.in Shanghai,we focus on the Beidou industry which is characterized by attributes of scientific and tech-nological innovation.We aim to explore why and how the founders of such enterprises craft and transform their roles and ultimately influence the process of organizational breakthrough innovation.The results show that:(1)External factors and founder traits are the dual antecedent variables of a founder's role craft and transition;(2)The processes underlying the effects of a founder's role craft and transition on breakthrough innovation are forming role moti-vation,constructing role orientation,performing role behavior,and leading to role effect in sequence;(3)With the periodic change of external factors and founder traits,the role motivations of a founder changed from core technology autonomy to application technology transformation and ecological technology deepening;role orienta-tion presents the evolution of"technology leader-strategic driver-innovation culture leader";the role behavior has also changed from resource self-construction to resource leverage and then to resource co-creation.All of this,in turn,promotes the breakthrough innova-tion effect of core technology breakthrough,application technology possession,and ecological technology empowerment effect. Compared to previous research,this study makes theoretical con-tributions in three aspects.First,by applying the concept of role craft and transition to the context of scientific and technological innovation enterprises,this study identifies the various types of founders'roles during the development process of such enterpris-es and expands the research context and theoretical boundary of role craft and transition.Second,this study proposes a theoretical model encompassing"external context and founder trait-role mo-tivation-role orientation-role behavior-role effect"and investigates why and how the founders of scientific and technological innovation enterprises shape and transform their roles,influencing the process of organizational breakthrough innovation.This not only helps us to answer the question of founder's role craft and transition deeply but also provides an integrated theoretical framework for further re-search exploring the evolution of founders'roles.Finally,this study reveals the phased effects of the founder's role craft and transition in scientific and technological innovation enterprises,which fills the research gap regarding how the founder's role craft and transi-tion influence outcomes at the organizational level and enriches the research on antecedents of breakthrough innovation.Furthermore,this study uncovers the theoretical logic of how the founder's role craft and transition affect breakthrough innovation from the pro-cess mechanism level.Simultaneously,this study echoes the call of existing research on the dynamic evolutionary relationship between changes in the founder's roles and innovative performance,thereby promoting the in-depth development of founder role theory in the field of innovation. This research also has several practical implications.On the one hand,given that external factors and founder traits are antecedent variables for a founder's role craft and transition,founders of sci-entific and technological enterprises should capture external infor-mation including policy,market,and technology.They should align their personal characteristics and further transform their roles to adapt to the evolution of organizational goals as the enterprise de-velops.On the other hand,the founders of these enterprises should recognize the impact of role craft and transition on breakthrough innovation,enhance the initiative of role management,adapt their role motivation and role orientations at different stages,as well as implement role behaviors by adopting resource allocation strategies.All of this,in turn,will lead to the role effect and promote organi-zational innovation.
Science and Technology EnterprisesFounderRole CraftRole TransitionBreakthrough Innovation
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维普
