Progression from technological entrant to innovative leader: an analytical firm-level framework for strategic technological upgrade

摘要

Technological advancement is a dynamic and complex process, and successful technological upgrading can promote an enterprise's overall competitiveness. Despite that there have been abundant and vibrant firm-level studies on technological upgrading,an integrated framework is still needed to thoroughly cover the overall process of a firm's progression from technological new entrant to innovative leader. In this paper, a firm-level conceptual framework is proposed to analyze the technological upgrading process of new entrants from newly industrializing economies. We classify the technological process into two patterns: the continuous pattern involving three stages of effort (i.e., technological imitation, technological catch-up, and technological overtaking) and the discontinuous pattern of technological leapfrogging. For each stage, we analyze activities that firms undertake and the four closely related drivers for further technological upgrading, including abilities acquired, problems encountered, windows of opportunity, and enterprise willingness. Furthermore, we synthesize some significant transitions in the continuous process of technological upgrade, namely, a firm's changing role in the industry-wide technological advancement, the feature of production, the firm's innovation ability, the locus of problem solving, and the position in the global value chain. The practical implications of the proposed framework and future research expectations are also discussed.