关键词: 实质性导向, 利用性创新策略, 探索性创新策略, 价值低估, 融资约束

Abstract:

Many studies have been done on the influencing factors of innovation strategies, such as Mixed-ownership Reform, Economic Policy Uncertainty, and Industrial Policy, etc. Few in-depth analyses have been conducted on the impact of differences in innovation strategies on firms’ financing behavior, and even fewer have been carried out with innovative SMEs as the research object. In an environment where the Chinese government supports innovative SMEs to grow as an important source of innovation, high-tech SMEs have become the source of China’s innovative vitality and contributed a lot to promote the rapid development of China’s economy.
According to whether the trajectory of enterprise innovation field is changed or not, innovation strategies can be divided into two categories: exploitative innovation strategies based on the inertia of technological innovation and exploratory innovation strategies out of the inertia of technological innovation. In May 2020, the National Intellectual Property Administration issued the document “2020 Promotion Plan for Accelerating the Construction of a Strong Intellectual Property State by Deepening the Implementation of the National Intellectual Property Strategy”, emphasizing the insistence on substantive innovation represented by invention patents as the guide. In this context, the exploratory innovation strategy is more attractive to investors. On one hand, based on the theory of psychological cognitive bias, the new domain innovation tends to attract more attention than the innovation in the same domain; On the other hand, based on the theory of limited attention, investors can only focus on some of the prominent information when faced with a complex and wide variety of information, and may ignore or underestimate other important information. Therefore, high-tech SMEs are likely to be undervalued and face more serious financing constraints or even bankruptcy risks due to their reluctant choice of exploitative innovation strategies, which is not conducive to the country’s promotion of substantive-oriented innovation reforms.
Based on the data of Chinese high-tech SMEs from 2014 to 2018, this study constructs an information transmission feedback mechanism and empirically examines the relationship between firms’ innovation strategies, undervaluation and financing constraints in the context of substantive orientation. The findings of the study are as follows: Firstly, in terms of innovation strategy selection, the weaker the resource allocation ability of high-tech SMEs, the more likely they are to choose exploitative innovation strategies. Secondly, there are differences in market responses to different innovation strategies, and investors will undervalue exploitative innovation strategies, and the more severe the cognitive bias and the more limited the attention of investors, the more severe the undervaluation. Lastly, the differential market responses will have different impacts, with more severe financing constraints on those firms adopting exploitative innovation strategy due to undervaluation. To examine the sources of financing constraints for firms with exploitative innovation strategies, we further explore the relationship between the innovation strategies and the different external financing methods. The results show that firms adopting exploitative innovation strategy are more likely to choose the debt financing in the form of the commercial credit financing and the bank borrowing financing, and are limited in the equity financing, which further validates the above findings.
This research not only gives a new dimension to innovation strategies at the theoretical level and extends the study of economic consequences of innovation strategies, but is also of practical significance in that it explores the choice and consequences of enterprises’ innovation strategies based on the background that the state vigorously supports the development of science and high-tech SMEs, and provides suggestions to solve their “expensive financing” and “difficult financing” problems in the innovation process.

Key words: Substantive Orientation, Exploitative Innovation Strategy, Exploratory Innovation Strategy, Undervaluation, Financing Constraints