With the diversity of customer needs and complexity of technology innovation, many high-tech small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) turn to open innovation, to produce the perfect match between market demands and firm resources. However, questions still exist in relation to open innovation in SMEs. Based on a framework combining both inbound and outbound open innovation with the four-stage new product development (NPD) process, this article explores the open innovation strategies adopted by high-tech SMEs in emerging economies for NPD and the reasons behind it through case studies. Results show that high-tech SMEs in emerging economies selectively adopt open innovation for NPD at different stages with various partners based on their needs. High-tech SMEs prefer to be closed to protect the know-how at the experimentation stage. Regarding the open innovation strategy, at ideation stage, SMEs adopt inbound open innovation for basic research and customer knowledge, while at manufacturing and commercialization stages, SMEs conduct both inbound and outbound open innovation. The analysis raises awareness of customer knowledge and customization to high-tech SMEs for NPD. This article contributes to the theories and practices on open innovation in SMEs.

Patent cooperation network, an important way for technology-based SMEs to enhance innovation performance, has become a research hotspot in recent years. Different types of patent cooperation network models and different degree of SMEs embedding them will lead to different effects on enterprise innovation performance improvement. This research selected the ICT industry and the pharmaceutical industry technology-based SMEs with rich patent output as research objects. Based on binary structure perspective of network breadth and depth, the patent cooperation networks are divided into four types: ‘strong exploration’, ‘weak exploration’, ‘strong utilisation’ and ‘weak utilisation’. Through the multi-selection model and the negative binomial regression model, the general factors in the selection of patent cooperation network models and the impact of different models on enterprise innovation performance are analysed. This research provides path breakthroughs and development proposals for technology-based SMEs to access innovative resources and enhance their innovation capabilities on patent cooperation networks.

The diffusion and embeddedness of cyber technology and big data technology is recognized as an opportunity and infrastructure for firms to innovate and transform. But which digital strategies existed firms in manufacturing and other traditional industries can make is still a question under research. The paper pursues to answer this question from the perspectives of data ownership and key value propositions. From the dimension of data ownership and key value propositions, this research proposes a research framework to guide the analyses of digital transformation strategy. The four firms are used to identify five types of digital strategies, namely new product strategy, new value-added service strategy, customized strategy, product embedded in the platform, and platform service / product strategy based on the framework of digital transformation strategy decision. This research suggests that a firm can select the suitable strategy considering his key value proposition and ownership of data which the firm could use. The research contributes to the research and practices on the digitalization strategy and the digital transformation of firms, especially those in emerging economies.