This book aims to answer the key question facing China in building an innovative country: What kind of indigenous innovation path with Chinese characteristics should be taken? This book conducts an in-depth analysis of the indigenous innovation path with Chinese characteristics from two dimensions: path evolution and level (enterprise, industry, region, and country). It puts forward the leading path of innovation with Chinese characteristics and also offers policy suggestions.

Innovation is widely recognized as a major source of modern productivity growth. Indeed, it is seen as constituting a central process of economic advancement in industrialized countries. Despite this, a considerable gap still exists in knowledge and technological capability between industrialized countries and the more dynamic developing countries such as China. Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are a major contributor to China's economy and SME's contribution to China's GDP is close to 60 per cent. This book studies the strategy and mechanism of leveraging innovation capability in China's SMEs by applying the theory of Total Innovation Management (TIM), which is the new paradigm of managing innovation in enterprises developed by the Research Center for Innovation and Development (shortly RCID) of Zhejiang University, China. According to Eric von Hippel, MIT, RCID is the Top 10 Innovation Management research institutes in the world. "Leverage Innovation Capability" probes the strategy and mechanism of leverage the innovation capability in the firm, especially in China's SMEs. It analyzes how the SMEs utilize all the innovation elements in the firm, including Strategy innovation, Tech innovation, marketing innovation, organization innovation, culture innovation, innovation networking, learning and knowledge management, high involvement innovation, cooperation innovation, etc. to leverage innovation capability.

This book is the research report of the 'Construction of Theory and Formation Mechanism of Total Innovation Management (TIM)' (Program No. 70372018), a program funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China. This program aims to discuss and analyze, under the general trend of indigenous innovation, how enterprises construct indigenous innovation capability through total innovation management and to offer enterprises theoretical foundations and practical guidance to develop themselves towards indigenous innovation.The research results are not only the results of a three-year long research but also the reflection of the accumulated experiences of our research center in the field of technology innovation for nearly 40 years. In the field of technology innovation, we have experienced three distinct phases, namely: secondary innovation, portfolio innovation and total innovation.Total innovation is the main characteristic of an innovation-based enterprise. Creating an innovation-oriented enterprise by constructing a total innovation system is the approach that successful foreign enterprises use to move towards excellence and also the only way that Chinese enterprises have to take to become innovation-oriented enterprises that leapfrog in development.