代际传承对家族企业创新的影响

: 协同创新的视角

Abstract

Intergenerational succession has become the core agenda faced by Chinese family businesses and is currently in a period of intensive succession. This replacement process not only concerns the handover of corporate control rights, but may also profoundly influence the strategic decisions and innovation paths of family businesses. In the long run, it may even affect the future development and prosperity of private enterprises in China. Although innovation is an important way for family businesses to achieve sustainable development, family businesses as a whole suffer from insufficient innovation investment and lack of motivation. Compared with the first-generation founders, the second-generation successors generally have a better educational background and more abundant knowledge resources. Therefore, intergenerational succession may be conducive to the innovative activities of family businesses. However, the existing research conclusions on the impact of intergenerational succession on the innovation of family businesses have not yet reached a consensus. Some studies have found that intergenerational succession can promote innovation in family businesses, while others suggest that second-generation successors may reduce the level of innovation investment for the purpose of protecting the family's emotional wealth. Based on this, this study focuses on Chinese family businesses, aiming to deeply explore the relationship between intergenerational succession and innovation in family businesses, and particularly analyze the role of collaborative innovation in this process, as well as the heterogeneous roles played by the characteristics of second-generation successors (including gender and overseas experience), in order to reveal the process by which intergenerational succession promotes innovation in family businesses through the collaborative innovation mechanism.
This study focuses on the relationship between intergenerational inheritance and innovation in family businesses, and adopts a hybrid research method combining qualitative and quantitative studies for analysis. Firstly, through the review and summary of existing literature, analyze the structural deficiencies existing in the innovation activities of family businesses and the potential for strategic change that may be brought about by intergenerational inheritance. Secondly, based on relevant theories and literature, this study proposes that intergenerational succession can enhance the innovation performance of family businesses by promoting collaborative innovation. Thirdly, based on the intergenerational inheritance data of family businesses, the background characteristics of the second generation and related financial indicators provided by the CSMAR database, as well as the cooperative patent application data in the incoPat database, panel data was constructed for regression analysis and heterogeneity analysis, empirically testing the direct impact of intergenerational inheritance on the innovation of family businesses. And the mediating role that collaborative innovation plays in it. Finally, through in-depth interviews with multiple family businesses that have completed or are in the process of intergenerational succession, the mechanisms obtained from quantitative analysis were verified and contextualized, effectively enhancing the practical explanatory power and statistical robustness of the research conclusions.
The main findings of this study are as follows: Firstly, intergenerational succession has a positive promoting effect on the innovation activities of family businesses, mainly reflected in the growth of the number of patents obtained and the number of patent applications; Secondly, collaborative innovation plays an important mediating role in the above-mentioned relationship, indicating that the second-generation successors effectively expand the boundaries of innovation resources and enhance innovation efficiency by promoting the integration of internal and external knowledge and strengthening cooperative innovation between family businesses and universities, research institutions, and other external enterprises. Finally, heterogeneity analysis indicates that male successors and second-generation successors with overseas study experience are more inclined to carry out collaborative innovation and demonstrate a more proactive awareness of cooperative innovation.
The results of this study indicate that intergenerational succession is not only a key link in the transformation of the governance structure of family businesses, but also reconstructs the innovation resources of family businesses by promoting collaborative innovation, thereby enhancing the innovation capabilities of family businesses. This study theoretically deepens our understanding of the relationship between inheritance and innovation in family businesses, and also provides important practical inspirations for family businesses that are currently in the process of generational transition: Not only should the systematic cultivation of the second-generation successors be emphasized, but also the capacity for cross-border resource integration should be strengthened. By deliberately guiding collaborative innovation between internal and external sources, a dual-wheel drive of intergenerational inheritance and enterprise innovation capabilities should be achieved, ultimately completing the smooth handover of the family and the high-quality development of the enterprise.

Date of Award	10 Nov 2025
Original language	Chinese (Simplified)
Awarding Institution	China Europe International Business School
Supervisor	Meng Rui (Supervisor) & Taiyuan Wang (Supervisor)