This paper, firstly, empirically examines the relationship between Chinese companies’ cross-border mergers and acquisitions and the acquirers’ innovation performance. Secondly, it investigates the moderate effects of industrial policy and intellectual property protection on the relationship between cross-border M&A and the acquirers’ innovation performance. At the same time, based on the perspective of corporate heterogeneity, the effect of state-owned equity on the above-mentioned moderate relationship was analyzed. The conclusions are as follows: First, Chinese companies’ cross-border acquisitions have significantly improved the acquirers’ innovation performance. Second, industrial policies negatively affect the relationship between cross-border mergers and acquisitions and the acquirers’ innovation performance. Third, the moderating role of intellectual property protection is not stable. Fourth, state-owned equity negatively affects the relationship between cross-border M&A and the acquirers’ innovation performance; the third-order interaction of state-owned equity on intellectual property protection, cross-border mergers and acquisitions, and the acquirers’ innovation performance shows that the special relationship between state-owned enterprises and the government not only failed to help them make better use of intellectual property protection for technological innovation, it also adversely hindered the realization of its innovative performance.

Why are some start-ups more successful than other companies? In view of this question, this paper deconstructs the growth mechanism of the present new Chinese ventures from the perspective of Internet entrepreneurship and points out that exploratory orientation and business model innovation play an important role in the new ventures growth process. Based on this, through the investigation of 210 start-ups in China, the research found that: (1) exploratory orientation is in a positive relationship with the growth of new ventures; (2) business model innovation plays a mediated role between exploratory orientation and new business growth; (3) Internet embeddedness is found as a moderator in the relationship between exploratory orientation and the growth of new ventures. This finding will not only help further deepen the new research in the new venture growth process but also help to further expand exploratory orientation, business model innovation and the important role of the Internet embeddedness in the growth of new ventures.

Innovation is one aspect of the pursuit of the harmonious development of the environment, economy, and society. Although prior research has examined the factors that influence corporate innovation, how external knowledge search affects it remains unclear. We contribute to this literature by examining how knowledge searches influence firms’ innovation performance from a knowledge-based point of view and organizational search theory. We utilized meta-analysis to conduct empirical testing on 15,059 samples from 58 independent studies. The conclusions are as follows: first, the overall test showed a significant positive correlation between external knowledge search and firm innovation performance; second, the group test shows that the positive impact of external knowledge search on the innovation performance of mature enterprises is more obvious; scaled measurement and collectivism have more significant influences on the relationship between external knowledge search and firm innovation performance. Further research concluded that a breadth search could provide higher innovation performance than a depth search. Meanwhile, the same results were obtained in the subgroup tests of start-ups, non-high-tech enterprises, high-tech enterprises, scale measurement, and collectivism. Finally, both balanced knowledge search and joint knowledge searches significantly improved the innovation performance of enterprises, and the innovation effect brought by balanced knowledge search is more prominent than the latter.