State-owned enterprise, government, and the innovation ecosystem

China’s economy has been developing rapidly for decades, and its innovation input and output evolve in a similar pace. Although these particular catching-up phenomena have been explained by researchers from divergent perspectives, the very critical players - the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have not been studied in depth. Different from prior research largely focusing on the inefficient aspects of SOEs, this chapter introduces a new perspective - innovation ecosystem, and elaborates its implications for analyzing SOEs’ outstanding innovations. In addition, the government’s roles are indicated as well, since the SOEs essentially are Chinese governmental assets.