Linking user interaction and new venture growth: the mediating role of new product development

ABSTRACT

This paper identifies both the breadth and the depth as two crucial dimensions of user interaction from an ecosystem viewpoint. We postulate that the breadth and the depth of user interaction are critical to the number of new products developed and development speed, which can then lead to new venture growth. Survey data from 341 new ventures from ICT sector illustrates that the number of new products developed mediates the relationships between user interaction breadth, user interaction depth and new venture growth, and development speed mediates the influence of user interaction depth on new venture growth. This study contributes to the literature by refining the conceptualization of user interaction, and developing a theoretically grounded research model to investigate the relationships among user interaction, new product development and new venture growth.

KEYWORDS:

• User interaction breadth
• user interaction depth
• new product development
• new venture growth
• ecosystem

Acknowledgement

The authors gratefully acknowledge academic and financial supports from the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant (no. 71672185), the Youth Innovation Promotion Association, Chinese Academy of Sciences under Grant (no.2017201), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no.71572017).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Chaoqun Zhang once was a lecturer on innovation management and entrepreneurship at School of Administration Management, Shandong University of Finance and Economics. Her research focuses on open innovation and entrepreneurship. She has published several papers in academic journals. She is working at Jovision Technology Co., Ltd. now and mainly centres on user innovation.

Jingjing Guo is an associate professor at Institutes of Science and Development, Chinese Academy of Sciences and School of Public Policy and Management, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. Dr. Guo's research concentrates on topics such as patterns of technological learning and knowledge flow, innovation management, and innovation policy. She has published articles in journals such as Technovation, International Journal of Technology Management (forthcoming), Asian Journal of Technology Innovation, and International Journal of Mobile Communications.

Xiaobo Wu is the Qiushi Chair Professor of Strategy and Innovation Management, an professor of School of Management, and Director of National Institute for Innovation Management at Zhejiang University. He is also the Director of the Zhejiang University-Cambridge University Joint Research Centre for Global Manufacturing and Innovation Management, and a member of a number of governmental and professional bodies, providing consultancy services for the industries. His research interests include managing technological innovation, global manufacturing and competitive strategy. He has published articles in journals such as International Journal of Technology Management, Asian Journal of Technology Innovation, International Journal of Mobile Communications, etc.

Hao Jiao is an associate professor of management at Business School, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China. His research interests include strategy, entrepreneurship management, innovation management, and dynamic capabilities theory within the context of emerging markets, among others. He has published well over seventy articles in major refereed journals in strategy, entrepreneurship and innovation management such as the Academy of Management Perspectives, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Chinese Management Studies and Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, among others.

Notes

1. This firm has rich experience in data collecting. It has collected 1.26 billion questionnaires for 19.92 million clients. Specifically, it has served more than 800 colleges including world famous universities such as University of Pennsylvania and more than 14,000 firms, some of which are from Fortune Global 500. There are more than 2,600,000 individuals registered to this data survey firm as respondents. They were required to offer information about their age, gender, occupation, income and so on, which is used to select proper targets. Of all registered respondents, the percentage of middle and senior managers is about 12%. This supplied us enough qualified respondents.

2. Where a and S_a is the parameter estimate and its standard error for the relationship between the independent and the mediator variable, respectively; b and S_b is the parameter estimate and its standard error for the relationship between the mediator and the dependent variables (Iacobucci, 2012).

Additional information

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge academic and financial supports from the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant (no. 71672185), the Youth Innovation Promotion Association, Chinese Academy of Sciences under Grant (no. 2017201), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 71572017).