Digital economy and technological innovation have become the focus of attention of all walks of life. The arrival of the fourth industrial revolution and the rapid development of information technology have created favorable conditions for open innovation to enable the development of digital economy such as the Internet and science & technology industry. Open innovation is becoming the "booster" of digital economy. As an effective way to maximize value in the era of digital economy, open innovation is of great significance for understanding the inherent law of digital economy and technological innovation and accelerating overall digital transformation of industries.
The essence of open innovation is to maximize value for innovation participants and improve the return on investment of social capital through new organization structure and the synergy of social capital between internal and external innovation activities. Based on organization forms, open innovation of enterprises can be in the fusion mode or in the fission mode. The fusion mode is an essential change through the aggregation of innovation resources such as small and micro innovation entities. The fission mode is achieved through the process of promoting innovative intellectual property to enterprises and market from high-tech sources. With the support of venture capital, more and more high-tech companies choose to cooperate with universities and scientific research institutes to carry out open technological innovation and innovation achievements transformation. Under the value fission model, multinational companies rely on innovative resources such as platform-based business model, unique technology or brand culture to open up their product and service innovation. This accelerates the process of collaboration on innovation and value diffusion between internal technical talents and SMEs upstream and downstream of external industrial chain.
The essence of the fusion mode is the innovation inspired by aggregation and synergy of human-oriented institutional and technological innovation. Compared with the fission mode, the fusion mode is more capable of technology diffusion. In essence, the capabilities of scientific and technological innovation and institutional innovation are also important components of social capital. The success of the fission mode often depends on four factors: innovation team of key talents, core basic intellectual property rights, value positioning in marketing and industrial standardization. A sound market mechanism is crucial to the formation of the fission mode, including the degree of industrial technology openness, policies for protecting intellectual property rights, scientific research and education development and the degree of market channel openness.
Open innovation, having become the core driving force of enabling industry transformation and upgrading and sustained economic growth, will further promote the development of China's scientific and technological innovation and digital economy, with the rapid popularization of artificial intelligence, Internet information technology and digitalization.
Shao Anju, professor, Economic Management Teaching and Research Department, Party School of Shanghai Committee of C.P.C.,