ABSTRACT As Southeast Asia emerges as a global AI hub, middle-income countries face critical choices about technology upgrading strategies that will determine their role in regional innovation ecosystems. This study evaluates Malaysia's AI infrastructure boom within the context of Singapore's emergence as the world's third-ranked AI nation, generating $$2.7 billion quarterly in NVIDIA revenue despite having only 5.9 million people (Crosley, B. (2025, August 7). Singapore's $$27B AI revolution powers Southeast Asia 2025. Intro l). Through comparative analysis with Singapore's integrated innovation model, Vietnam's manufacturing-focused absorption strategy, and Thailand's structured clustering approach, we examine whether Malaysia's $$30 + billion AI infrastructure investments represent genuine technology upgrading or path-dependent repetition of earlier development patterns. Despite impressive infrastructure deployment – including Southeast Asia's largest data centre expansion and cross-border integration through the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone – Malaysia exhibits persistent constraints: 88.6% foreign-dominated patent applications (World Intellectual Property Organization. (2023). Malaysia country profile: Innovation and IP statistics. WIPO ), accelerating brain drain affecting 35.9% of skilled diaspora (TalentCorp Malaysia. (2021). Talent mobility and skills migration patterns: Malaysian diaspora study. TalentCorp ), and fragmented coordination across multiple agencies. While Singapore commits 2.76% of government expenditure to AI initiatives, Malaysia allocates only 0.15% (MyDIGITAL. (2025). Budget 2025 accelerates Malaysia's transformation in AI. Government of Malaysia ), revealing a credibility gap between policy rhetoric and resource commitment. The analysis demonstrates that infrastructure-led approaches without systematic technology transfer requirements perpetuate dependency patterns rather than building indigenous innovation capacity. However, Singapore's capacity constraints create unprecedented spillover opportunities for Malaysia through cross-border integration that could transform the country from peripheral location to integral component of a world-leading AI ecosystem. The findings suggest that sustainable technology upgrading in Asia requires institutional innovations emphasising cross-border collaboration, performance-based technology transfer, and regional integration strategies that transcend traditional competitive approaches to foreign investment attraction.

ABSTRACT Mission-oriented innovation represents a novel paradigm aimed at addressing specific societal and environmental challenges. Drawing on the entrepreneurial state theory, this paradigm suggests that the government can act as a market-shaper, regulator, financier, risk-bearer, and demonstrator in various capacities. However, existing research remains unclear regarding the government’s role and the mechanisms through which it shapes markets. For this purpose, the present paper develops a demand-side mission-oriented innovation process model and examines the government's influence in shaping the new electric vehicle market through both To C (targeting consumers) and To E (targeting enterprises) approaches. The results indicate that the level of mission-oriented innovation policies across regions in China, as well as their coordination with NEV sales, has remained low and uneven; policy attention to lower-tier markets and NEV after-sales services remains nascent. Nevertheless, these policies have shown moderate yet meaningful effects in reducing carbon emissions, highlighting the need for further refinement in policy formulation. The conclusions and prospects obtained can provide decision-making references for the evolution of market shaping theory from the perspective of the entrepreneurial state, the implementation and promotion of market shaping strategies, the optimization of innovative policy instruments and measures, and policy design and evaluation.

ABSTRACT This study employs a two-way fixed effects model and multiple case study analysis to investigate the impact of government procurement on the smart specialisation of specialised, refined, differentiated, and innovative (SRDI) enterprises. Using a sample of 547 Chinese A-share listed ‘little giants’ from 2011–2022, we identify key characteristics of smart specialisation among SRDI enterprises. The findings reveal that government procurement positively influences the smart specialisation of SRDI enterprises, with this conclusion remaining robust across various validation tests. The impact of government procurement operates primarily through alleviating financing constraints and enhancing expected market returns for SRDI enterprises. Additionally, cross-case analyses provide further insight into the relationship between government procurement and smart specialisation, supporting the baseline model results and highlighting heterogeneity across different firm characteristics. This study contributes empirical evidence to the ongoing discourse on the role of government procurement in fostering the smart specialisation of SRDI enterprises and provides a theoretical foundation to guide policymakers in optimising procurement strategies.

ABSTRACT Based on panel data of 398 listed manufacturing companies in China's Shenzhen – Shanghai A-shares from 2012 to 2022, this study uses the double fixed effect model to explore the direct impact and heterogeneity of entrepreneurship in the new era on the green innovation efficiency of manufacturing enterprises and utilises the intermediary effect model to investigate the indirect mechanism of entrepreneurship in the new era on the green innovation efficiency of manufacturing enterprises. Research has shown that entrepreneurship in the new era can significantly improve the efficiency of green innovation in manufacturing enterprises, especially for state-owned, technology-intensive, labour-intensive, and non-heavy polluters. The mechanism test results show that entrepreneurship in the new era increases enterprise performance, promotes the driving effect of digital transformation on manufacturing enterprises’ green innovation efficiency, and is an important channel for improving this efficiency. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the driving effect of entrepreneurship in China's new era, provides a reference for the innovation practice of promoting green transformation in the manufacturing industry, and provides important theoretical and empirical evidence for expanding the research frontier of green innovation efficiency.

ABSTRACT This article examines the difference between innovative culture for product innovation vs. process innovation and sheds light on Confucian and Taoist philosophical roots in innovative cultures for the two types of innovation. We first identify four dimensions of innovative culture: freedom, openness, team spirit, and support & career development, and hypothesise that freedom and openness are more emphasized in innovative culture for product innovation, while team spirit and support & career development are more stressed in innovative culture for process innovation. Using survey data from 33 high-tech enterprises in China, we find support for our predictions. We further analyse that Taoism is more relevant to innovative culture for product innovation, whereas Confucianism is more related to innovative culture for process innovation. By distinguishing innovative cultures between product vs. process innovation and relating to Confucianism and Taoism, this paper provides a nuanced as well as philosophical understanding of innovative culture.

ABSTRACT Although big data has been claimed to revolutionise the way firms innovate, there is still a lack of knowledge about how big data affects firm innovation under different investment combinations. Drawing on the resource-based view, organisation learning theory, and organisation change theory, we introduce big data into a Kline-Rosenberg chain-linked model to propose that firms harness information value from big data to improve innovation output while organisation-wide adjustments increase innovation risk. Based on the data collected from Chinese listed firms, our empirical results reveal that combining big data and R&D investment can improve innovation output and reduce innovation risk. In contrast, combining big data and IT investment significantly increases innovation risk. The finding that overinvesting in IT enhances firm innovation risk contributes novel insights to the literature by contradicting the belief that investment is beneficial to innovation.

ABSTRACT This study seeks to examine the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) with social networks (SNs) as a mediator and the business environment (BE) as a moderator among Malaysian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) operating in Cambodia. Using a snowballing sampling methodology, the study gathered data from 103 SMEs to undertake the moderation-mediation analysis. The findings show that SN mediates and BE moderates the association between EO and SCA, demonstrating that entrepreneurs focus on leveraging external resources to compete in the marketplace, especially when embedded in a highly dynamic but hostile BE. The evidence shows that a profound understanding of small business internationalisation and operational factors can assist home and host governments to support better the relocation and functioning of SMEs abroad.

ABSTRACT CVC has been widely promoted and applied in the field of subversive innovation, which can well solve the problem of financing subversive innovation and further help the bottom source innovation. Through the case study of Google and Huawei indirect and direct investment in AI and 5G communications, the periodic characteristics, dual motivations and basic approaches of CVC to promote disruptive innovation are refined from the investment behaviour rules, investment strategy objectives, investment measures and means in the process of CVC investment in disruptive innovation. It is found that in the process of CVC promoting disruptive innovation, the characteristics formed in the seed stage, growth stage and maturity stage of disruptive innovation are different; CVC motives for promoting disruptive innovation include both external and internal motives; CVC adopts effective measures and means from the industrial, information and policy levels to promote the realisation of disruptive innovation. Based on the research conclusion, relevant enlightenment is obtained to provide theoretical support and practical reference for in-depth exploration of the internal mechanism of CVC in promoting disruptive innovation.

ABSTRACT The concept of the entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) has become increasingly popular among policymakers because of its potential to drive economic growth. In many countries, the promotion of EE has been linked with innovation policy but little research has been done to examine whether such policy can facilitate EE’s development. Using the case study method to examine the growth of China’s unicorns, which are productive entrepreneurial outputs of EE, this paper investigates the process of EE’s emergence and development, and the role of government policies, including innovation policy, in promoting EE’s growth. The paper advances three policy implications derived from the case study; first, the important role of government policies in creating institutional contexts; second, developing informal institutions, and third, implementing a systemic intervention, to promote EE’s emergence and development.

ABSTRACT This study investigates the validity of exploitation and exploration when small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) navigate a highly uncertain time. Although balancing the two strategies has been thought to lead to improved firm performance in general, a combined approach appears to be problematic for SMEs due to a lack of feasibility. We theorise that the effectiveness may vary depending on a fit between the strategies and the environmental contingencies. In doing so, we considered two potential environmental contingencies of a crisis for SMEs: loss of demand and loss of supply. To put our theory to the test, we gathered 224 responses from business leaders and key individuals from Korean start-ups and tested the effectiveness of crisis management strategies. Our findings support the validity of both exploitation and exploration when firms face a loss of demand, but not a loss of supply. It implies that the effectiveness of exploration and exploitation is contingent upon a specific form of crisis experienced at the firm level.