A Comparative Empirical Study on the Product R&D Capability of Manufacturing Industry

Abstract

Since the stage of Industry 4.0, high-end product design and new technology development have become the key to manufacturing innovation for some countries. As the foundation and carrier of high-tech industries, manufacturing is an important guarantee for national security, and companies engaging in manufacturing should make efforts to improve their product R&D capability while paying attention to economic benefits. However, there is still a lack of feasible index system to evaluate the product R&D capability of manufacturing industry. For the purpose, through the research methods of index evaluation and empirical analysis, this paper took the Chinese manufacturing industry as subject, selected 1344 companies in 28 industries as research samples. Then, this paper analyzed the situation of some sample companies in detail, discussed the product R&D conditions of current manufacturing companies from a few perspectives: inside, outside, and the industry. The results showed that the current product R&D capability of China's manufacturing industry can be divided into three levels. This paper provided a practical evaluation model for the manufacturing industry and contributed to policy recommendations.

Keywords

• China
• empirical study
• innovation
• manufacturing industry
• product R&D capability