We define the ‘Chinese way’ of internationalization as oriented toward experimental learning, in contrast to traditional internationalization models, such as the Uppsala model. Analyses of survey data of private Chinese firms that have made outward foreign direct investments (OFDI) show that only 50 percent follow the Uppsala model in which firms follow a staged approach. The other 50 percent follow more risky explorative OFDI approaches in which the firms learn on the ground experimentally from their OFDI. We further investigate how the founders’ congenital learning, firms’ inward international experience, potential absorptive capabilities, and motivations to learn, influence OFDI performance and how learning outcomes mediate these relationships. We show that the relationship between the firm’s potential absorptive capacity and its OFDI performance is fully mediated by what the firm learned from the OFDI project. Also the firm’s motivation to learn directly affects performance and is partially mediated by what the firm has learned.
This article reviews the current literature on the implications of the Belt and Road (B&R) Initiative for Chinese multinational enterprises (CMNEs) and calls for further empirical investigations of the motivations, processes, and consequences of the expansion of CMNEs into B&R countries. We posit that the rapid expansion of CMNEs in these countries indicates assets, rather than liabilities, for the county of origin. Empirical studies in this special issue provide new insights into what is "Chinese" about Chinese foreign direct investment in B&R countries and how the "assets of origin" may play a role in CMNEs' expansion in B&R countries.
PurposeThe authors attempt to answer the basic questions: How is imitation tied to innovation? This question is addressed in the context of China's innovation system in the 2000s where Chinese industrial firms simultaneously implement innovation and imitation strategies in their new product developments.Design/methodology/approachThe authors first build on lattice theory and supermodularity theory to provide a rigorous and careful mathematical proof. The authors further conduct the empirical analyses using an original data on Chinese manufacturing firms' innovation and imitation strategies in the development of new products in 2002.FindingsThis article reveals the complementarity relation between imitation and innovation strategies and identifies external knowledge search as the boundary condition that influences the extent to which two strategies reinforce each other.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings of the imitation-innovation complementarity suggest that imitation is not only an indispensable strategy independent of innovation, but also is vital to the effectiveness of innovation itself.Practical implicationsThe imitation-innovation complementarity finding provides some evidence for the contention that Chinese latecomers exploit the synergies of imitation and innovation, transforming themselves from imitators to innovators and vibrant competitors in the global market (Wu et al., 2016) and, as a result, national innovation system has evolved from a state-sponsored imitation program to the imitation-innovation mixture.Originality/valueIn contrast to earlier innovation studies in which innovation and imitation are unrelated, this study reveals that imitation complements innovation, and the extent of Chinese firms' external knowledge search affects the complementary relationship between imitation and innovation. These findings add important insights to the innovation management literature and contribute empirical evidence to the interplay of innovation and imitation enhancing national innovation system.
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