Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the moderating effect of two types of external funds in terms of loan and government subsidy on the relationship between R&D investment and firms' innovation performance in emerging markets, as well as the contingent role of firm leader's international experience associated with the effects of loan and government subsidy.Design/methodology/approach: The authors tested the hypotheses using a longitudinal dataset of 716 high-tech firms of Zhongguancun Science Park (ZSP) in China during 2008–2014, covering detailed information on the operations, financial situation and R&D activities, patents, etc. The authors finally identified an unbalanced panel of 2,430 firm-year observations. Considering the dependent variable is the countable data and non-negative values, the negative binomial regression with fixed effects was adopted to test the hypotheses.Findings: The results show that the more loans or government subsidies the firm receives, the weaker the positive effect of R&D investment on firms' innovation performance in emerging markets. Furthermore, the findings reveal that firm leaders' international experience can mitigate the negative moderating effect of government subsidies, but strengthen the negative moderating effect of loans.Originality/value: The study provides new insights into how loans and government subsidies as external funds influence the effectiveness of R&D in enhancing innovation performance, and the findings highlight the fact that more external funds can reduce firm R&D efficiency. Moreover, the authors also enrich the resource orchestration theory by revealing the critical role of firm leaders' international experience in the decision-making of resource configuration to mitigate the inefficiency of high subsidies in emerging markets.

Purpose: The synergy between platform owners and complementors plays a crucial role in the evolution of platform ecosystems. However, there is limited understanding of the correlation of strategic actions between platform owners and complementors. This study aims to explore how platform owners and complementors drive the evolution of platform ecosystems through strategic synergy implementation, driven by market triggers, and the outcomes of these synergistic strategies. Design/methodology/approach: The study adopts a longitudinal case study of the Xiaomi platform ecosystem. The temporal bracket and structural approach are used to analyze and theorize the data. Findings: This study examines the strategic interactions between platform owners and complementors and identifies three synergistic strategies, namely, resource synergy strategy, system synergy strategy and scenario synergy strategy. These strategies build on the foundation of core products, facilitating horizontal diversification and integration while driving vertical contextualization. By implementing these synergistic strategies, platform ecosystems evolve progressively, starting with one based on core products, then moving to one based on combination products and finally to one based on scenario products. Research limitations/implications: Further research can explore the distinctions in the evolutionary trajectories and synergistic strategies of transactional and innovative platform ecosystems. Additionally, by delineating the types of complementors, studies can investigate the strategic interactions between different types of complementors and platform owners, as well as the synergistic strategies, providing new perspectives and deeper insights. Originality/value: This study expands the procedural research on the evolution of platform ecosystems, revealing the evolutionary trajectory of platform ecosystems. Meanwhile, we also pay attention to the correlation of strategic actions between platform owners and complementors, proposing three synergistic strategies to drive the evolution of platform ecosystems.

Purpose: Although the role of returnees is critical to firm innovation, the literature offers inconsistent findings regarding returnees' effect on firms' innovation performance. To reconcile this issue, the authors argue that taking the types of innovation into account – i.e. technical innovation and commercial innovation – is necessary. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine how firms led by returnees affect the relationship between research and development (R&D) input and above two types of innovation output, as well as the contingent role of political connections (PCs) and venture capital funding (VC funding).Design/methodology/approach: This study empirically tested the hypotheses using a dataset of 54,617 firm-year observations for 18,475 Chinese firms in Zhongguancun Science Park (ZSP) from 2009 to 2014.Findings: The results show that the positive effect of R&D input on technical innovation performance (TIP) is reinforced when firms are led by returnees, while the positive effect of R&D input on commercial innovation performance (CIP) is weakened when firms are led by returnees compared with those firms led by the local counterparts. The findings further show that returnee firms' positive effect on the relationship between R&D input and technical innovation performance is more salient for firms with more PCs but weakened for those with more VC funding.Originality/value: This study enriches the research on returnee firms' advantages and disadvantages in transforming R&D input into innovation performance, and the findings highlight that firms led by returnees can increase R&D efficiency of technical innovation, but reduce R&D efficiency of commercial innovation. Moreover, this study offers a contingent view of political and economic stakeholders' roles in returnee firms' innovation, by revealing PCs help returnee firms to enhance R&D efficiency in technological innovation, while venture capital can hamper such R&D efficiency.

Both managers and researchers closely examine the factors that motivate firms to explore new domains and acquire new knowledge in pursuit of greater innovation. Considering the role of demand-side factors in innovation, in this study, we investigate how customer concentration influences exploratory innovation based on Chinese listed firms from 2009 to 2019. As the characteristics of the top management team (TMT) may affect the influential mechanism, we further investigated the moderating effects of board interlocks and the CEO’s research background. Our results demonstrate that with the increase in customer concentration, the exploratory innovation level shows an inverted U-shaped trend. The board interlocks strengthen the positive effects of customer concentration on exploratory innovation, while a CEO’s research background mitigates the negative effects. Our findings offer key insights and serve as a benchmark for companies that aim to achieve innovation in their approach to managing customer relationships and organizing their top management teams.