Competition, Collaboration, and IP Breakthrough in Chinese High-Speed Train Sector

How does government coordination in the strategic sectors affect the impact of relational resources on firm intellectual property (IP) development in the emerging economies?
A research team led by Professor Justin Tan at Schulich attempted to address this question by investigating innovative performance in China’s high-speed train sector.

The research, recently published in Journal of International Business Studies, challenged some widely held conventional wisdom. For instance, contrary to prior findings that international joint ventures (IJVs) lead technological innovation in the emerging economies, IJVs under-perform in IP development in the context of China’s high-speed train sector, whereas government-affiliated domestic firms out-perform.
The research paper, titled “Relational Assets or Liabilities? Competition, Collaboration, and Firm Intellectual Property Breakthrough in the Chinese High-Speed Train Sector”, was co-authored by Aurora Liu Genin (PhD, Schulich), Assistant Professor of Management at University of Massachusetts Amherst in the US; Justin Tan, Professor of Management and the Newmont Chair in Business Strategy at the Schulich School of Business in Canada; and Juan Song, Professor of Management at Central South University in China. It is part of a comprehensive research project about governance reform, innovation, and technology development in the rail transportation equipment manufacturing industry. Another research paper from the project was also published in Journal of International Business Studies in 2021 (“State Governance and Technological Innovation in Emerging Economies: State-Owned Enterprise Restructuration and Institutional Logic Dissonance in China’s High-Speed Train Sector”).