Title: Can venture capital trigger innovation? New evidence from China
Authors: He Ni; Tianhong Luan; Yu Cao; Donald C. Finlay
Addresses: School of Finance, Zhejiang Gongshang University, 18 Xuezheng Street, HangZhou, China ' School of Finance, Zhejiang Gongshang University, 18 Xuezheng Street, HangZhou, China ' Economic Department, Duke University, 213 Social Science Bldg., Durham, NC27708, USA ' Coventry Business School, Faculty of Business, Environment and Society, Coventry University, Priory Street, Coventry, CV1 5FB, UK
Abstract: With the continuing globalisation of the world economy, countries seek to develop and support their venture capital market. Whether venture capital really can trigger innovation or not at all is of interest not only to academia but also to commercial firms, venture capital institutions and government agencies. Based on statistical data collected from the Chinese market, this paper aims to provide material insight on, firstly, whether venture capitals can influence innovation and, if so, by how much; and secondly, whether venture capital leads innovation or whether it is innovation which leads developments in venture capital. The innovation of the sample firms is quantified by the consideration of patent counts and associated productivity growth. The sample firms collected from a group of innovation active industries are selected by a number of discriminative covariates widely cited in the extant literature. The empirical findings demonstrate that venture capital has a positive but limited impact on innovations in the current market. Innovation and productivity growth in particular may also be triggered by the growth potential of firms. We therefore propose a few possible unique factors to explain the underlying mechanism of venture capital in promoting innovation within the context of the Chinese market.
Keywords: venture capital; innovation; patents; total factor productivity; TFP; China; productivity growth; firm growth potential.
International Journal of Technology Management, 2014 Vol.65 No.1/2/3/4, pp.189 - 214
Received: 02 Jul 2012
Accepted: 05 Sep 2013
Published online: 30 Jun 2014 *