Research on the Performance of Knowledge Co-Creation of Science and Technology Enterprises Based on IUR Network

The current research on knowledge co-creation mostly starts from the perspective of process, studying the process of knowledge co-creation, but there is very little research on the performance of knowledge co-creation. As the carrier of enterprise knowledge co-creation, the industry-university-research network (IUR network) provides a platform for enterprise knowledge co-creation. The purpose of this article is to explore the influence of the centrality of the IUR network on the performance of corporate knowledge co-creation, and the mediating role of corporate absorptive capacity. Technology companies are knowledge-intensive companies and have more knowledge co-creation behaviors. Therefore, this article selects the top 100 technology companies in China’s electronic information industry from 2015 to 2019 as the research sample, and establishes the IUR network based on their cooperative patent data. Our empirical results show that: (1) in the IUR network, the higher the network centrality, the enterprise may have better knowledge co-creation performance; (2) the centrality of the industry-university-research network has a significant role in promoting absorptive capacity of enterprises; (3) the absorptive capacity of enterprises has a complete intermediary effect between the centrality of the IUR network and the knowledge co-creation of technology-based enterprises. This research uses the IUR network to study the performance of knowledge co-creation, which further enriches the related research fields of knowledge co-creation.