Mapping the innovation production process from accumulative advantage to economic outcomes: A path modeling approach

The research about the innovation production process (IPP) is burgeoning. Our understanding of the interdependent interactions between functionally distinct innovation activities during it from a systemic perspective is rather unclear, yet, which is beneficial to empirical innovation management. This study, based on systems thinking, presents a novel analytical framework to empirically and quantitatively map the IPP jointly associated with a path modeling approach, which helps in untangling the interactive mechanism between stage-specific innovation activities with distinct functions within an IPP from accumulative advantage to economic outcomes. We use the attractive analytical framework to guide an empirical investigation to the China's high-tech industries' IPP at the macro-regional level. Our empirical study confirms the dominant role of previous innovation capital accumulation in the whole IPP embedded into regional innovation systems of China's high-tech industries. That is, we prove the existence of accumulative advantage phenomenon in the regional IPP. The examination results show that there is a significant Matthew effect of technological innovation accumulation on technological innovation inputs as well as the Path dependence of technological innovation outputs/outcomes on technological innovation accumulation. This indicates that the innovation-practitioners should promote innovation capital accumulation for sustainable innovations and economic profits in a long time. At the same time, our findings suggest that, in order to alleviate the cross-regional unbalance of innovation development and promote radial innovations in China's high-tech industries, both policy-makers and innovation-practitioners should try to get rid of the dependence on the previous accumulated innovation capital.

► A novel analytical framework was developed to empirically map the innovation production process.
► The interdependent interactions between distinct innovation activities are described.
► A structural modeling approach was employed to empirically examine the innovation path.
► The phenomena “Matthew effect” and “Path dependence” were empirically investigated and confirmed.
► Our empirical study confirmed the dominant role of previous innovation capital accumulation.