关键词: 知识运用, 创新, 新颖性, 专利数据, 汽车行业

Abstract: Although previous studies have touched upon the role of downstream firms’ knowledge on the innovation, there still need a systemic and deep discussion on the effect of using downstream firms’ knowledge in the inventions. In this paper, we focus on the newness of inventions, and according to it to classify innovations. We use two dimensions to express the innovation’s newness: the novelty of the technological domain (the innovation is initiated in an unfamiliar domain to the supplier) and the emergingness of the knowledge elements (emerging or nascent technological knowledge is used in the innovation). Then four types of innovations generated by crossing these two dimensions, and each type exhibits different kind of technological newness: the type 1 innovations (using mature knowledge in a familiar domain), the type 2 innovations (applying emerging knowledge in a familiar domain), the type 3 innovations (using mature knowledge to enter a novel domain), and the type 4 innovations (using emerging knowledge to enter a novel domain). An empirical analysis applying patent data of the US automotive industry shows that, automakers are the most effective knowledge source for the supplier’s type 3 innovations, and they are equally effective to the supplier’s internal source for the type 1 innovations; the use of automakers’ knowledge has no significant relationship to the usefulness of the type 2 or the type 4 innovations.