Ying Zhang’s research while affiliated with Dalian University of Technology and other places

This study explores the impact of a focal firm’s (located in emerging economies) international R&D cooperation with partners in both emerging economies (EE) and developed economies (ED) on its exploitative and exploratory innovation in a bifurcated world. By distinguishing between EE and ED R&D cooperation, we propose a theoretical framework that explains the relationships between EE/ED R&D cooperation and firms’ exploitative/exploratory innovation based on knowledge recombination view. Using a sample of China’s pharmaceutical firms from 2010 to 2022, our findings indicate that firms’ structural shifting from ED to EE R&D cooperation reshapes the structure of innovation in the context of bifurcation. EE R&D cooperation has a greater positive impact on the focal firms’ exploitative innovation compared to exploratory innovation, whereas ED R&D cooperation is more conducive to exploratory than exploitative innovation. Meanwhile, bifurcation positively affects the proportion of EE on the international (EE+ED) R&D cooperation, and the share of firms’ exploitative innovation increases. Moreover, when inter-country political relations are amicable, EE and ED R&D cooperation generates more benefits for the focal firms’ exploitative and exploratory innovation.

Star inventors are the most outstanding innovators in the technology field. Most extant literature defines star inventors along the lines of performance and social relationship. This paper presents a three-dimensional model of star inventors—invention performance, social relationship and technology commercialization as an extension of previous multidimensional conceptualizations of individual differences in inventive capacity. Furthermore, a rank–frequency distribution model combined with the Peak Over Threshold (POT) model based on Extreme Value Theory (EVT) is utilized to determine the threshold for distinguishing stars from non-stars. One case study describes inventors in the graphene sector based on the USPTO database. The findings suggest that 491 star inventors can be identified out of 5777 inventors in the graphene sector; the highest overlap between any two types of star inventors is up to 21%. If the commercialization of inventors is not considered, nearly half of the commercial stars will be ignored. All-stars are the most outstanding in terms of invention performance, social relationship and technology commercialization, but they are also the scarcest.