Innovation Mechanism of Technological Firms Operating within Technological Cluster: Empirical Evidence from China

In recent years, research about local knowledge spillovers (LKS) has attracted more attention. Many earlier studies argue that LKS is the main factors that influences innovative performance of technological firms operating within industry cluster, at the same time, absorptive capacity and technological opportunity are also important to firm's innovative performance. In this paper, we empirically analyses the relationship among knowledge spillover, absorptive capacity, technological opportunity and innovation performance of technological firms within technological cluster. The empirical data come from questionnaires of 205 firms in Changchun software industry cluster in China. The results demonstrate that knowledge spillover, absorptive capacity and technological opportunity are important factors to determine innovative performance of technological firms operating within cluster. The results also show that absorptive capacity positively moderates the relationship between knowledge spillover and innovative performance, and absorptive capacity also moderates the relationship between technological opportunity and innovative performance.