External resources and knowledge largely contribute to technology innovation of industrial firms. The external innovation linkage system of firms is shaped through two main mechanisms. On the one hand, the innovation network is a basic system arrangement to cope with firms systematic innovation crossing regions and sectors. The industrial firms may acquire diversified and high qualified external resources and knowledge to improve the ability of firms and promote in-novation through this arrangement. Secondly, the cluster innovation mechanism of firms provides a common source of knowledge and provides for informal interaction and knowledge flow among firms. The cooperation for innovation and the complement for resources between firms in a regional cluster become an important external mechanism of innovation for each firm. Although cluster mechanism and network mechanism respectively acquire external resources and knowledge for innovation, the nature and flow of resources and knowledge acquired by firms are different between both the mechanisms, resulting in different impacts of each mechanism on the firms' innovation. Along with the time evolves, limitations of each innovation mode of action is gradually revealed. Based on the analysis of the role of cluster and network mechanism play in impacting technology innovation of firms, the paper explores how external factors in each mechanism hindering or promo-ting innovation of firms, giving the reasons for this. Then it suggests the complementary effects of two kinds of innovation mechanisms, explaining how to make use of both mechanisms to benefit technology innovation of firms through comple-mentary effects between them. It also introduces the cluster and network dynamic variables, which may be used to meas-ure the influence of cluster evolution and network evolution on firms' innovation process.%已有文献指出企业外部资源和信息是创新的重要支持,需要进一步深入研究企业创新外部联系机制中各种因素如何影响企业创新以及它们之间如何互补或配置.企业技术创新的网络机制和集群机制是目前文献中认为最重要的企业创新外部联系机制,尽管网络机制和集群机制沿着不同轨迹发展并且有其局限性,但是网络和集群也许可以发挥互补作用或扮演相互替代角色,更好地作用于企业技术创新.列出了创新障碍因素及促进因素以量化企业创新过程,通过解析网络和集群对企业创新过程的影响机制,提供了一个更加丰富、细致的理论框架,可以解释外部变量如何促进或者阻碍企业技术创新.然后,分析两者如何通过互补克服局限性,更好地促进企业创新.最后,引入集群与网络活力变量,探讨在集群和网络不同发展阶段外部联系对企业创新影响的变迁与演化.
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