Collaboration partner portfolio along the growth of Chinese firm's innovation capability: configuration, evolution and pattern.

This paper examines R&D collaboration of Chinese firms along the growth of innovation capability from the portfolio perspective. Taking advantage of longitudinal patent data from the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) between 1985 and 2008, the configuration, evolution and pattern of collaboration partner portfolio of Chinese firms are investigated. The results show that: 1) Chinese mainland enterprises (CMEs) are active to engage in R&D collaboration, while most Taiwan-invested enterprises (TIEs) and foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs) still develop innovation capabilities on their own; 2) the partner portfolios of CMEs with high growth rate are characterised by a smaller number of partners, lower level of repeated partnerships and higher collaboration intensity, while the low-growth CMEs just show an opposite trend; 3) universities have gradually become the most prominent partners of both high-growth and low-growth CMEs, but the firms are also experiencing a significant growth in their portfolios. By contrast, the role of research institutes is decreasing rapidly, especially in low-growth CMEs. Finally, four typical collaboration patterns are drawn from in-depth analysis of Chinese collaborating firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]