Search

Although prior studies investigated the influence of partner diversity on focal firms’ innovation performance, they failed to consider partners’ ecosystem positions and the roles of regional innovation environment and partnership heterogeneity. To fill these gaps, this study examines the relationship between supplier diversity, customer diversity, regional innovation environment, partnership heterogeneity and innovation performance to provide a comprehensive and throughout understanding of the influence of partner diversity on innovation performance. Based on data of 188 Chinese manufacturing firms, this article finds that both diversities of upstream suppliers and that of downstream customers contribute to innovation performance. Regional innovation environment and partnership heterogeneity moderate the influences of supplier diversity and customer diversity on innovation performance. In a favourable regional innovation environment, the benefits of diverse upstream suppliers for innovation are eroded, while the benefits of diverse downstream customers for innovation are enhanced. Partnership heterogeneity with suppliers can mitigate the moderating effect of regional innovation environment on the relationship between supplier diversity and innovation performance. These findings advance the literature on partner diversity and innovation performance, thus providing fine-grained managerial implications to firms to orchestrate diverse inter-organizational partners for innovation.

Developing renewable energy generation such as wind power and photovoltaics is an effective way to cope with energy shortage and environmental problems. The virtual power plant (VPP) realizes the grid-connected operation of intermittent distributed renewable energy by aggregating multiple types of distributed energy resources. In order to achieve the energy optimization problem of the VPP, an optimization method of VPP considering coordination and interaction of source-load-storage is proposed in this paper. First, models of components in the VPP are established. Next, an energy optimization model of the VPP considering coordination and interaction of source-load-storage is constructed. Finally, a case is studied to verify the correctness and effectiveness of the method. The results show that the coordinated consideration of distributed generation, energy storage and demand response loads contributes to reducing the operating costs and carbon emissions of the VPP.