Abstract：Based on the strategic needs of the nation, the central government make the use of resource-push and demand-pull approach to creat institution-led market, aiming to accelerate the development of domestic industries. In recent years, institution-led market is becoming an vital measure of the government in emerging economies to drive industries thrive and achieve catch-up. Existing research lacks in-depth exploration of how latecomers within the institution-led market context to seize specific window of opportunities to realize technology catch-up. Based on the perspective of dynamic capabilities, this paper use exploratory longitudinal single-case study approach to analyzes the dynamic evolution process of Mindray from catching-up to leading-up from the period of 1991 to 2023: (1) At the stage of product catch-up, firm could make the use of dynamic capabilities containing weak equilibrium institution-led-market sensing, utilization innovation strategy capturing and organizational asset restructuring to promote product technology breakthrough and niche market leadership, leading to breakthroughs at the product level. (2) At the stage of platform catch-up, firm could make the use of dynamic capabilities containing resource institution-led-market sensing, exploratory innovation strategy capturing and organizational structure restructuring to promote product solution breakthrough and mainstream market leadership, leading to breakthroughs at the platform level. (3) At the stage of ecosystem catch-up, firm could make the use of dynamic capabilities containing demand institution-led-market sensing , dual form innovation strategy capturing and organizational process restructuring to promote commercial ecological breakthrough and overall market leadership, leading to breakthroughs at the ecosystem level.
The core theoretical contributions and innovation insights of this paper are reflected in three aspects First, we deconstructed institution-led-market context from the dimension of resource support and market creation, and then brought it to the dynamic capability theory framework. And by doing that we propse the process mechanism model of enterprises’ efficient use of institution-led-market window of opportunities to promote technology catch-up from the perspective of dynamic capability. Second, we summarize a new dynamic capability framework containing institution-led-market sensing (equilibrium, resource and demand institution-led-market sensing)-innovation strategy capturing (utilization, exploration and dual strategic capturing)-organizational restructuring (asset, structure and process reconstruction). This framework reveals the micro-mechanism of how enterprises open the institution-led-market window of opportunities through dynamic capabilities. The dynamic capability theory is thus deepened. Finally, from the perspective of institution-led market utilization, we reveal the important role of government institutional arrangements in latecomers’ catch-up process, and proposes a new technology catch-up path of “product-platform-ecology”, contributing to the theoretical research in the field of latecomers’ catch-up under the unique Chinese context.
The practical significance of this paper lay in two aspects On the one hand, this paper aims to provide a new analytical framework and practical reference for local latecomers to break through the “bottleneck” dilemma by taking the best advantage of China’s unique institutional and market advantages. Firms could take their resources endowment into consideration and restructure dynamic capabilities to capture opportunities of the environment in different stages of development. On the other hand, we also provide a reference for policy makers to build an institution-led market to pull local industries to achieve key core technologies breakthroughs and gradually realize domestic substitution. Policy makers may go forward to build a innovation consortium triggered by institution-led market deliberately, and in the meantime keep institutional opening in order to promote the implementation of institution-led market and industrial development dynamically.
