Corporate Spin-offs'Strategic Paths to SRDI Enterprises:An Innovation Knowledge Spillover Perspective
Spin-offs derived from the incumbent companies as parents are a special and widespread category of small-and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs).These firms are"born with a silver spoon",possessing immense potential for growth in niche markets.How spin-offs may develop into specialized,refinement,differential,and innovation(SRDI)enterprises to help address the"shortcomings"in the industrial chain and overcome"bottleneck"technologies is a critical issue related to national growth strategy.This paper constructs a configuration analysis framework from the perspective of innovative knowledge spillover based on the parent-spin-off relationship.It explores how the antecedent conditions such as the parent being the lead firm in the industrial chain,the degree of innovative knowledge spillover,and whether a spin-off is entrepreneurial at the nodes and bottleneck areas of the industrial chain interact to jointly promote the development of spin-offs into SRDI enterprises.Through the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis(fsQCA)of 37 parent-spin-off paired data from questionnaire surveys in multiple industries,this paper finds that the interaction between spin-offs and parents is a necessary condition for their development into SRDI enterprises.Spin-offs rely not only on absorbing and transforming the innovation knowledge spilled over from the parent company but also need to make strategic choices focused on their niche entrepreneurial field.The parent company being a lead firm promotes its spin-offs to embed in the upstream and downstream sectors of the industrial chain for achieving the development into SRDI enterprises.The emergent three paths for spin-offs to develop into SRDI enterprises are equivalent configurations as"chain-lead empowerment and chain-filling type""knowledge-exploiting innovation type"and"knowledge-exploring breakthrough type".Spin-offs that do not meet the standards of SRDI enterprises show the conjuncture characteristics of multiple antecedent conditions,presented by two equivalent configurations,either falling into"isolation type"due to lack of support such as innovative knowledge from the parent company,or falling into"lost type"due to not choosing the right development direction.Further findings reveal various knowledge interaction relationships between spin-offs and their parents.This paper expands research on SMEs'growth patterns into SRDI enterprises and the applicable boundaries of knowledge spillover theory in the context of corporate spin-offs.It deepens the understanding of knowledge links between parent companies and spin-offs and provides multiple pathways and practical implications for incumbent companies to cultivate SRDI enterprises through the reform of spinning off and for the derived spin-offs to achieve the development to SRDI enterprises.Additionally,it offers actionable guidance for the government in formulating policies related to the cultivation of SRDI enterprises.
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