Abstract
There is no doubt that the primary reason that firms encourage knowledge sharing is to drive innovation. As nutrients for innovation, what role do the different elements of intellectual capital play in this relationship? When we consider the ambidexterity of enterprise innovation—exploratory and exploitative—how do the different elements of intellectual capital affect the relationship between them? This study adopts a triadic perspective to divide intellectual capital into human, structural and relational capital. We analyzed 349 questionnaires from high-tech enterprises and found that knowledge sharing had a significantly positive effect on all three elements of intellectual capital, and human capital and structural capital had a positive effect on ambidextrous innovation. Relational capital had a positive effect on exploitative innovation but no significant effect on exploratory innovation. Unexpectedly, there was no direct effect of knowledge sharing on ambidextrous innovation, and the elements of intellectual capital play full mediations among them. This may suggest that firms should pay more attention to the role of relational capital when they adopt exploitative innovation. At the same time, we remind managers that innovation may be promoted only when knowledge sharing increases intellectual capital. Therefore, the misuse of management tools should be avoided, and ineffective management practices should be reduced. In addition, we explored the relationship between knowledge sharing and the open innovation paradigm and made some suggestions for future research.
Highlights
For many high-tech enterprises, knowledge-based technical resources are the core competitive advantage on which they rely for survival
Based on the 349 survey samples, we examined the impact of knowledge sharing on ambidextrous innovation through different elements of intellectual capital using structural equation modeling, and we obtained the following conclusions
Knowledge sharing has a significantly positive effect on different elements of intellectual capital, indicating that the greater the active knowledge sharing in an enterprise, the more likely it is to promote the accumulation of intellectual capital
Summary
For many high-tech enterprises, knowledge-based technical resources are the core competitive advantage on which they rely for survival. Making full use of knowledge reserves and technical resources and insisting on innovation-driven high-quality development has become the key to success for such enterprises [2]. Knowledge sharing is one means by which individuals can apply their knowledge to innovation to enhance their status within the organization. Likewise, it is an important way for enterprises to acquire creative capabilities, reduce production costs, promote a broader open innovation strategy, and achieve revenue growth [3,4]. Knowledge sharing can help enterprises become learning organizations with an efficient resource flow, promote diffusion of knowledge throughout the enterprise, and generate intellectual capital through the integrated operation of business and value processes [5], thereby providing the impetus for enterprises to innovate at different levels
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