Innovation performance of new products in China's high-technology industry

Abstract

Innovation performance assessment of new products in a high-technology industry is conducive to assessing the quality of innovation. Therefore, it improves the operational efficiency of enterprises. It is of great significance for innovation policy-making. This paper presents a theoretical framework for evaluating innovation performance in which the contribution of new product development funds is divided into several elements, including invention, utility model, and appearance design patents. Based on this framework, the elasticity of invention patents to new product sales revenue is divided by the elasticity of new product development funds to new product sales revenue, and the result is used as an indicator to evaluate the innovation performance of new products. Taking the interprovincial panel data of China's high-technology industry as an example, the relationships between the variables, including number of invention patents, new product development funds, R&D funds, and new product sales revenue, were studied comprehensively by using a panel data simultaneous equation model, Granger causality tests, a panel threshold regression (PTR) model, and a Bayesian vector autoregressive (BVAR) model. The results showed that the overall innovation performance of new products in China's high-technology industry, which reached only 42.9%, was unsatisfactory. Despite the poor performance of invention patents, the high-technology industry in China showed strong developmental potential and is entering a transformation period for innovation quality improvement. The overall performance of investments in developing new products was satisfactory. The contribution of new product development funds increased as the enterprise scale increased and as new product sales revenue increased.