According to the law that product innovation determines process innovation but is subject to process environment, process innovation can be divided into three levels from the source and time sequence of innovation activities:
(1) Process pre-innovation comes from enterprise development strategy. Including three aspects: first, the key technologies necessary for future product model development; Second, from the perspective of technology development trend, the technologies that must be developed (such as CAD, CAPP, FMS, CMS) and so on; Third, some key technologies that need to be solved to improve the technical level of products. Its innovation source is the development strategy of the enterprise, which aims to enhance the technological innovation ability of the enterprise and mainly serve the future product innovation.
(2) Real-time process innovation from product innovation. That is, the technological innovation in the product development stage originates from the technical bottleneck of current product design and production, and mainly serves the products under development. The technological innovation at this stage is more about secondary development by using existing technologies.
(3) batch process innovation brought by economies of scale. That is, the process innovation in the mass production stage, whose innovation source is economies of scale, aims to make the trial-produced products meet the requirements of mass production quality and efficiency, and its essence is the engineering of scientific and technological achievements.
2. The Importance of Technological Innovation in Enterprise Development The tendency and behavior of attaching importance to product innovation and neglecting technological innovation is not only common in China, but also in developed countries. This is a phenomenon associated with the development of market economy. In order to make their products enter the market as soon as possible and obtain greater economic benefits, enterprises must first invest resources in product innovation, especially in the case of insufficient resources. However, paying too much attention to product innovation and ignoring process innovation will bring a series of negative effects. First of all, the time to market of products has been shortened. Many new products have not gained a firm foothold after being listed, and they have been eliminated because of problems such as quality, performance and price, and have not achieved due benefits. Constantly changing products also increases the cost of enterprises. Secondly, the main negative impact is the decline of product quality and high energy and material consumption, which makes the enterprise benefit decline. Due to the neglect of technological innovation, once some imported goods are replaced by imports, that is, after localization, the quality is obviously reduced, the competitiveness of products is reduced, and some of them quickly withdraw from the market. Therefore, technological innovation is particularly important in the process of enterprise technological innovation.
2. 1 Technological innovation is an objective requirement to continuously improve the economic benefits of enterprises. The technological level not only has a vital impact on the product quality of enterprises, but also affects the material consumption, energy consumption and efficiency of enterprise production. In other words, the technical level of an enterprise directly determines the conversion efficiency of various input resources in the production process and determines the economic benefits of the enterprise. Under the condition of unchanged enterprise technology, although the economic benefits of enterprises can be improved to a certain extent by strengthening management and other means, this possibility is limited. A certain technical level determines the general scope of economic benefits of enterprises. To continuously improve the economic benefits of enterprises, it is necessary to continuously carry out technological innovation.
2.2 The development of technological innovation activities is conducive to improving the product innovation ability and market competitiveness of enterprises. In the process of enterprise technological innovation, there is a certain dependence and interaction between product innovation and technological innovation. Advanced production equipment and technology are helpful to reduce production costs, improve labor productivity and product quality of enterprises, better promote the industrialization and commercialization of product innovation results, and realize product innovation benefits. On the other hand, if the technological innovation ability is weak, the enterprise's production equipment is outdated and the production technology is backward, the product innovation will fail because of the bottleneck of production technology, or the market competitiveness due to poor efficiency will be lacking. For example, in the field of medical biotechnology, China's upstream basic research may only be 3-5 years behind the international level, and it is still at an advanced level in some fields such as transgenic technology and stem cell technology, but the downstream technology level is at least 15 years. It is reported that the upstream research results are rarely transformed into biotechnology products, and the ratio of the two is less than 0.5%. Therefore, process innovation is an important way to improve the technical level and product innovation ability of enterprises and a necessary means to improve the competitiveness of enterprises.
2.3 Technological innovation can extend the leading time of innovative enterprises. The new product is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it opens up new markets and enterprises get high returns. On the other hand, it attracts a large number of imitators. Enterprises generally use patents to resist this rapid attack, but the protection of patents is time-consuming. After the patent expires, the product no longer has monopoly in the market. At the same time, it takes a long time to commercialize some patented technologies (such as research and development of new drugs), and many patents have expired at the beginning of the life cycle of new products. However, technological innovation can provide long-term protection. Because technological innovation enterprises have more complicated technological processes and higher production efficiency, imitators can't achieve it in a short time. Objectively, there is a time lag of imitation, and the diffusion speed of manufacturing technology is slower than that of product technology.
3. Problems needing attention in promoting technological innovation With China's accession to the WTO, China enterprises have more frequent trade with foreign countries and will participate in international competition in a wider scope. Partners and competitors are no longer limited to domestic enterprises in the surrounding areas, but a large number of modern enterprises in foreign countries or regions, which have advanced technology, advanced production equipment and advanced production technology. In this case, Chinese enterprises should first carry out concept innovation, establish and strengthen the consciousness of process innovation, fully realize the importance and urgency of process innovation to the survival and development of enterprises, attach importance to and strengthen the ability of process innovation of enterprises, so as to improve labor productivity and reduce production costs, and improve the overall market competitiveness of enterprises. On this basis, we should increase the capital investment in process innovation, strengthen internal management and improve the utilization rate of limited process innovation funds. Establish an effective talent and incentive mechanism. In addition, in the process of promoting process innovation, the following points are also worthy of attention.
3. 1 Maintaining the continuity of process innovation Compared with product innovation, process innovation is usually accomplished through stable, continuous and gradual innovation, not through some major leap steps and breakthroughs. In the process of technological innovation, sometimes some important steps may be taken, such as adopting new production systems or improving the organization's information processing system. But generally speaking, the long-term successful technological innovation of enterprises comes from continuous and gradual changes. If the enterprise lacks continuity and long-term vision in the process of process innovation, it will eventually lead to the disconnection between the process adopted by the enterprise and the specific environment of the enterprise, thus reducing the overall efficiency of the enterprise.
3.2 Pay attention to distinguish between the elements in process innovation and those related to process innovation: structural elements and basic elements. Structural elements include some specific technical elements: the number, location, scale and quality of production facilities; Type and production capacity of production equipment; The basic organizational form of production technology; The status of production supporting services such as water, electricity and sewage facilities; Status of external supply and distribution networks. The basic elements mainly include: production control system; Quality management system; Production process management system. At the same time, the basic elements include human resources, the quality, age and experience of production personnel; Organization of production tasks; Cooperation tendency of different functional departments; Communication mode and overall control management mode of enterprises. Finally, the basic elements include cultural factors, such as values generally recognized by employees in production departments and traditional behavior patterns. Compared with the former, the basic elements are slightly abstract, but they also have great influence on process innovation. Grasping these elements has certain guiding significance for implementing process innovation.
3.3 Pay attention to the development and protection of intellectual property rights in the process of technological innovation. Intellectual property is paid more and more attention by enterprises, and it is one of the core elements for enterprises to maintain their competitive advantage. In the process of technological innovation, new technologies and methods are protected by patents, while special methods to solve "bottleneck" problems can be protected by technical secrets. This way of fixing technological innovation achievements as intellectual property assets can, on the one hand, transform achievements from tacit knowledge state to explicit knowledge state, carry out timely and effective protection, form exclusive possession and prolong product life cycle, on the other hand, it is beneficial for enterprises to transform personal knowledge capital in human resources into enterprise knowledge capital, promote enterprises to control and utilize knowledge capital more effectively and reduce the loss of knowledge capital caused by talent flow.
3.4 Strengthening the combination of process innovation and product innovation The combination of technological innovation was put forward by Professor Xu Qingrui of Zhejiang University in the 1980s. Many examples show that simple product innovation cannot maintain its competitive advantage for a long time, and it must rely on process innovation, and the existing process foundation should be fully considered in the process of product innovation. There is an obvious interaction between product innovation and process innovation, and product technology and process technology develop alternately. The fundamental reason for this alternate conversion mode lies in the dependence and interaction between the evolution of product technology and process technology. Therefore, in the process of technological innovation, we should correctly understand the interaction between product innovation and process innovation, ensure their coordinated development, and thus improve the competitiveness of enterprises.
3.5 Enterprises should strengthen process innovation management from a strategic perspective. When enterprises only focus on short-term process applications and lack preparation for future process models, it will lead enterprises to spend a lot of money to develop advanced process systems, but ultimately they cannot integrate into their original production systems. When the process innovation lacks unified planning, the products of enterprises will be in a state of vacillation, and due to this instability, enterprises may eventually lose their competitive advantage in the market. Therefore, process innovation must serve the overall strategy of enterprises.