Technological Forecasting & Social Change xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

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Technological Forecasting & Social Change

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/techfore

Assessing relationship and contribution of China's technological

entrepreneurship to socio-economic development
⁎
Siqing Shana,b, , Yingwei Jiaa,b, Xianrong Zhengc, Xiaobo Xud
a
Department of Information System, School of Economics and Management, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China
b
Beijing Key Laboratory of Emergency Support Simulation Technologies for City Operation, Beijing, China
c
Department of Information Technology and Decision Sciences, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA 23529, USA
d
School of Business Administration, American University of Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: As a driver of global economic growth, the development of emerging economies has been a highly significant
Technological entrepreneurship trend over the past decade. China has adopted technological entrepreneurship as a national strategy for future
Socio-economic development economic development. In this paper, we applied a statistical description, contribution rate, gray absolute
Contribution rate correlation, and elastic coefficient analysis to assess contributions of technological entrepreneurship to national
Gray absolute correlation
development. We found that: (1) The number of technology enterprises has been growing and their contributions
National development
to the country's output value, exports, employment, and tax are increasing; (2) From 2010 to 2014, the industrial
output value of technological entrepreneurship accounted for 41.49% of the average GDP growth. There is a
high correlation between technological entrepreneurship and economic growth with a gray correlation coeffi-
cient of 0.8296. (3) Technological entrepreneurship has made a significant contribution to the promotion of
technological progress and foreign trade. Invention patents created by entrepreneurs accounted for approxi-
mately 71% of domestic invention patents. The total export value of high-tech products accounted for ap-
proximately 22.6%. (4) Technological entrepreneurship didn't have a clear impact on employment with an
employment elasticity of only 2.79%. (5) The contribution rate of technological entrepreneurship to state tax
revenue was approximately 8.49%. We considered the paper as the first endeavor to study technological en-
trepreneurship in China from macro perspectives which have both theoretical value and practical significance
for socio-economic development.

1. Introduction
Over the past decade, emerging economies have driven global
economic growth in a highly significant trend (Li, 2017). Emerging
economies, such as India, Russia, and Brazil, account for an increasing
proportion of the world's exports, including technological exports.
Consistent with the trend, the Chinese government is paying more and
more attention to technological entrepreneurship, offering policy sup-
port, and increasing capital investment (Greeven, 2004; Peng et al.,
2008). Given the policy and managerial implications of this issue, an
understanding of the relationship between technological en-
trepreneurship and socio-economic change is necessary.
In 1970, “technology entrepreneurship” was first proposed in a
seminar at Purdue University (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000).
Technological entrepreneurship is a vital way to commercialize tech-
nological innovations, whether by creating a new business entity or
establishing a new venture within an existing company (Hindle and
Yencken, 2004; Hisrich et al., 2016; Lei et al., 2016). Thus, technolo-
gical entrepreneurship transforms promising technologies into value. In
recent years, many scholars have extended this concept. According to
Bayers et al. (2014), technological entrepreneurship is a business lea-
dership style that identifies high-potential and technology-intensive
commercial opportunities; gathers resources such as talent and capital;
and manages rapid growth and significant risks using principled deci-
sion-making skills. Bailetti (2012) defined technology entrepreneurship
as a project investment to assemble and deploy specialized individuals
and heterogeneous assets which are closely related to scientific and
technological knowledge advances for creating and capturing value.
Therefore, more efficient usages of increasing innovation, new assets,
and competitiveness can lead to the development of products and ser-
vices (Badzinska, 2016).
Generally, technological entrepreneurship has two research streams
in the literature. One is the study of high-technology entrepreneurship
(Kenney and Burg, 1999; Siqueira and Bruton, 2010; Zhang et al.,

⁎
Corresponding author at: Department of Information System, School of Economics and Management, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China.
E-mail addresses: shansiqing@buaa.edu.cn (S. Shan), jiayingwei@buaa.edu.cn (Y. Jia), xiaobo@aus.edu (X. Xu).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2017.12.022
Received 11 February 2017; Received in revised form 18 December 2017; Accepted 30 December 2017
0040-1625/ © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Shan, S., Technological Forecasting & Social Change (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2017.12.022
S. Shan et al.
2012), and the other explores public research commercialization and
applications of academic research (Trune and Goslin, 1997; Wright
et al., 2004; Yuan and Jia, 2005). China's technology capability has
significantly developed by collaborating inventive activities with other
major inventive countries (Ma et al., 2009). With the fluctuated global
economy, any policy to encourage economic growth for either devel-
oped or developing countries is likely to nurture new entrepreneurial
high-technology firms (Smith and Sharmistha, 2012). The role of high-
technology firms in economic growth and innovation practice has re-
ceived significant attention due to these firms' contributions to eco-
nomic development and job/wealth creation (Mcgowan et al., 2011). In
this context, the level of national technological entrepreneurship can be
measured through relevant data on high-technology and new tech-
nology enterprises in the country.
In recent years, scholars have addressed emerging technological
entrepreneurship such as Internet, big data, cloud computing, IoT
(Internet of things), and etc. (B. Xu et al., 2014; Bag et al., 2016; Bendre
and Thool, 2016; Cai et al., 2014; Civerchia et al., 2017; Fan et al.,
2014; Fang et al., 2014, 2015; Furtado et al., 2017; Jiang et al., 2014; L.
Xu et al., 2014; Li et al., 2013, 2014; Liu et al., 2017; Sabar et al., 2016;
Whitmore et al., 2015; Xie et al., 2017; Xu, 2016; Xu et al., 2016; Yang
et al., 2018; Zheng et al., 2014). Cloud technologies facilitate the de-
velopment of internationally oriented small- and medium-sized en-
terprise (SME) entrepreneurship by providing greater access to global
markets, lowering opportunity costs, and supporting collaboration and
innovation in an increasingly connected world (Bi et al., 2014; Ross and
Blumenstein, 2014; Assante et al., 2016). Manyika et al. (2011) pre-
sented big data as the next frontier for innovation, competition, and
productivity. Cordon (2015) discussed whether big data creates or de-
stroys jobs. The Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) innovation ex-
panded organizations' productivity with adequacy and precision. RFID
also assisted in improving operational complexity in a short period of
time. Consequently, the application of RFID would bring benefits to
organizations and customers (Qureshi et al., 2016; Alyahy et al., 2016;
Mao et al., 2016; Zhai et al., 2016). In summary, emerging technologies
have a significant impact on society, economics, and culture.
As an emerging economy, China is developing its technological
entrepreneurship in many areas (Li, 2013) such as cloud computing, big
data, mobile Internet, and IoT. The software industry's revenue had
reached 4.3 trillion in 2015 and it is expected to exceed 8 trillion Yuan
with an average annual growth rate of 13% or more by 2020. The big
data industry was 280 billion Yuan in 2015 and it is expected to reach 1
trillion Yuan in 2020 with an average annual growth rate of approxi-
mately 30%. In 2015, the IoT industry's revenue reached 750 billion
Yuan. In 2020, the total industrial value of IoT including sensor man-
ufacturing, network transmission, and intelligent information service
will exceed 1.5 trillion Yuan. The number of Chinese netizens reached
710 million, of which the number of mobile phone users was 656
million in June 2016. The proportion of mobile Internet users also in-
creased from 90.1% to 92.5% by the end of 2015 (Ministry of Industry
and Information Technology, 2017).
Although transformation occurs rapidly in emerging economies, few
studies measure the contribution of technological entrepreneurship to
socio-economic change by using direct methods and applications. Most
scholars have conducted research in specific fields from their own
perspectives (e.g., economic growth). Phan and Foo (2004) argued that
many developing countries have identified technological en-
trepreneurship as a key driver for the next phase of economic growth.
Such countries such as Singapore, Israel, Ireland, India, and China have
tried to duplicate the Silicon Valley experience by recreating techno-
logical universities, venture capital funding, exit markets, attractive
lifestyles, and a highly educated workforce. Using the structural equa-
tion modeling, Rostamnezhad et al. (2014) concluded that technolo-
gical entrepreneurship has a significant positive effect on economic
development in Iran. The high-tech industry has been the most im-
portant sector of the technology economy in China since the reform and
2
Technological Forecasting & Social Change xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
opening policy implemented in 1978 (Greeven, 2004). An and Ahn
(2016) emphasized the importance of technological forecasting to
commercialize emerging technologies. Over the past 30 years, market-
based reform (often known as marketization) of the Chinese economy
has fostered technological entrepreneurship and contributed to the
creation of successful high-tech firms such as Baidu, Sohu, and Alibaba.
Technological entrepreneurship represented China's endeavor to be-
come a modern economy (Charles and Jian, 2014). Based on com-
parative studies across countries, some scholars emphasized the im-
portant role that the central government plays as well as highlighted
limitations within each system (Kao, 2012; Soofi, 2016).
The technological entrepreneurship has promoted socio-economic
growth with the growth of China's high-technology enterprises (Jiao
et al., 2016; Wu et al., 2017). However, the literature does not clarify
the development of technological entrepreneurship or its contributions
to socio-economic change. In general, research on the socio-economic
impact of technological entrepreneurship is still in its exploratory
stages. Therefore, we focused on the developmental status of China's
technological entrepreneurship and presented empirical and quantita-
tive evidence to show the extent of its contribution to socio-economic
change. Four aspects are highlighted in this paper: industrial produc-
tion output, export trade, social employment, and national tax. A clear
understanding of the relationship between technology entrepreneurship
and socio-economic change will help policy and decision makers to
design more detailed policies. These policies, in turn, may foster the
healthy and orderly development of technological entrepreneurship in
China.
The paper is structured as follows. In Section 2, we describe the
developmental status of China's technological entrepreneurship.
Section 3, we present the model and data used to measure contributions
of technological entrepreneurship to socio-economic change. In Section
4, we use proportion, gray correlation, and elastic correlation methods
to assess technological entrepreneurship's contributions to the economy
and society. Finally, we conclude and offer suggestions for the devel-
opment of China's technological entrepreneurship.
2. The developmental status of technological entrepreneurship in
China
2.1. Technological entrepreneurship achievements in China
China has systematically formed a scientific research system since
1978. The strategy of China's science and technology sector was to turn
towards economic growth, emphasizing that the economy would be
built on scientific and technological progress. This policy was a driving
force to promote technological entrepreneurship. Technological en-
trepreneurship took place earlier in China than in other emerging
economies. China's technological entrepreneurship achievements are
reflected in three primary ways.
The market-oriented science and technology reforms created a
number of opportunities. China has made great efforts to promote
market-oriented science and technology by emphasizing the combina-
tion of technology and economics and accelerating the transformation
of applied research institutions since 1985. Business has become the
main field for technological innovation. Additionally, a large number of
science and technology enterprises have been cultivated. Thanks to
these reforms, such well-known high-tech enterprises as Lenovo,
Founder, and Huawei have emerged and others run by colleges and
universities.
China has enhanced its industry competition by promoting the im-
plementation of scientific and technological achievements in the pri-
vate sector. Moreover, through its national industrialization plan, China
has achieved major breakthroughs to upgrade its industrial structure
and promote socio-economic development. In 2014, China's technical
market trading continued to flourish. The national technical contract
turnover exceeded 800 billion Yuan, an increase of 14.8% over the
S. Shan et al.
previous year, which provides support for the application of achieve-
ments in science and technology. The technical service contract turn-
over accounted for half of the national total. Specifically, more than
half of technical transaction contracts focused on electronic informa-
tion, advanced manufacturing, and modern transportation.
China has developed its high-tech industry by establishing high-tech
industrial development and experimental zones since 1980. In 2014,
37.3% of 62,556 high-tech enterprises in China valued more than one
million Yuan. Meanwhile, high-tech enterprises created an industrial
output value of 21,133.59 billion Yuan with a growth of 20.7% com-
pared to 2013. Taxes collected from these enterprises were 1067.48
billion Yuan, an increase of 15.1% over 2013. Their total export volume
was 506.86 billion US Dollars, up 3.1% over 2013. By the end of 2014,
high-tech enterprises had 19.15 million employees, among whom the
number of college graduates reached 6.75 million.
2.2. Technological entrepreneurship development challenges in China
The development of technological enterprises in China has played
an important role in promoting the combination of technology and
economy, new industries, and economic growth. However, compared to
developed countries, technological entrepreneurship in China is still
facing many challenges.
First, the financial service system for science and technology is still
in the exploratory stage. China has just started angel investments which
is less than a tenth of venture capitals. As a result, it is difficult to
promote the transition of laboratory technology to the commercial
usage. Even for the venture capital, the scale of the investment is still
small and has a strongly speculative aspect. For example, about one-
third of venture capitals are supported by the state per year in the
ZhongGuanCun Technology Park. However, total venture capitals are
only one-fifth of the Silicon Valley's total venture capitals. In addition,
various service organizations adopt high standards and conditions
which narrow the scope of support offered by these service systems,
particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises.
Second, entrepreneurship policies and regulations need to be im-
proved. Specifically, a comprehensive law is needed for covering rights,
obligations, and responsibilities of all subjects in the transformation of
scientific and technological achievements. Moreover, China lacks spe-
cific and public service policies to promote such development.
Finally, the outlook is not promising from the perspective of na-
tional scientific and technological innovation. In 2014, only 16.9%
(64,000 enterprises) of all large-scale industrial enterprises conducted R
&D activities. In other words, the R&D investment intensity (the ratio of
R&D expenditure to primary revenue) is only 0.84%. This number im-
plies: 1) R&D institutions are lacking in China; 2) the R&D investment
intensity is low; and 3) the innovation capacity is insufficient.
3. Research methodology
3.1. Data sources
The data used in this paper are derived from four sources: 1) the
China Statistical Yearbook; 2) the Torch High-tech Industry Report of
the Ministry of Science and Technology; 3) the website of relevant
Chinese government agencies, such as the State Intellectual Property
Office of The P.R.C (http://www.sipo.gov.cn), the State Administration
of Taxation (http://www.chinatax.gov.cn), and the Ministry of Industry
and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China (http://
www.miit.gov.cn/); and 4) statistical data from organizations related to
big data, cloud computing, IoT, and mobile Internet. For example, the
Chief Data Officer Alliance (http://www.cdoclub.cn/) released a "2016
China Big Data Enterprise Ranking" to collect and organize the devel-
opmental status of > 700 domestic big data companies. This ranking
analyzed business services and solutions multi-dimensionally across
application areas, industry consolidation, knowledge cities, and other
3
Technological Forecasting & Social Change xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
aspects.
The China Statistical Yearbook data include statistics from more
than three major industries in China. The high-tech industry reports
from the Ministry of Science and Technology include the development
of high-tech industries and other data. The State Intellectual Property
Office provides patented technical data. The data released by the State
Administration of Taxation include corporate tax information and other
data. The information about big data (http://www.cdoclub.cn/), cloud
computing (http://www.ccopsa.cn/) and IoT (http://www.china-iot-
alliance.com/) are scattered across multiple institutions. We organized
and integrated these data to conduct our analysis.
High-tech enterprises can represent technological entrepreneurship
with relatively complete data. Therefore, the majority of the analysis is
conducted based on datasets concerning national high-tech enterprises
from 1996 to 2014. National high-tech enterprises refer to companies
supported by the state who have registered for more than one year in
China in high and new technologies. They continuously carry out re-
search and development (R&D) and promote technological achieve-
ments to produce core, independent, intellectual property rights for
business. These enterprises are knowledge-intensive, technology-in-
tensive economic entities. Moreover, the analysis also utilizes data on
the R&D of domestic, large-scale industrial enterprises and technical
market contract transactions, among other areas.
3.2. Research methods
The methods used in this paper are described as followings:
(1) Statistical description method: it is used to present the develop-
mental status and trends of China's green industry and the pro-
portion of technological entrepreneurship indicators in socio-eco-
nomic areas.
(2) Contribution rate method: it calculates the economic impact of
technological entrepreneurship to indicate the role of technological
entrepreneurship in the stimulating economic growth. Its con-
tribution rate is expressed as Cp. The formula is:
∆GTPi
Cp =
∆GDPi (1)
Cp refers to the contribution rate of technological entrepreneurship
to the total economic output in year i; Δ GTPi refers to the increment of
the output value of national high-tech enterprises in year i; and Δ GDPi
refers to the increment of GDP in year i.
(3) Gray absolute correlation degree: it is a method to study the re-
levance relationship between variables and factors. If two variables'
change rates in development (i.e., two curves' slope) are similar,
they have a better degree of correlation.
We used the number of high-tech enterprises in China from 1996 to
2014 as the reference sequence and GDP for the same period as the
comparison sequence. We expressed the reference sequence and the
comparison sequence as x0 and x1, respectively, in Formulas (2) and
(3):
x 0 = (x 0 (k ), k = 1, 2,…, 19) (2)
x1 = (x1 (k ), k = 1, 2,…, 19) (3)
The absolute relevance calculation is listed as below:
1) Initialization: make the sequences comparable in Y0, Y1:
x (0) (k ) ⎫
Y0: ⎧ 0(0) = {y0(0) }
⎨
⎩ x 0 (1) ⎬ ⎭ (4)
x (0) (k ) ⎫
Y1: ⎧ 1(0) = {y1(0) }
⎨
⎩ x (1) ⎬
⎭ (5)
1
S. Shan et al.
2) First-order difference: find the slope at each point in the curve:
α (1) (y0(0) (k + 1)) = y0(0) (k + 1) − y0(0) (k ) k = 1, 2, …, 18
α (1) (y1(0) (k + 1)) = y1(0) (k + 1) − y1(0) (k ) k = 1, 2, …, 18
3) Correlation coefficients:
1 According to Table 1 and Fig. 2, we concluded that: 1) The tech-
ξ (k + 1) =
1 + |α (1) (y1(0) (k + 1)) − α (1) (y0(0) (k + 1))|
= 1, 2, …, 18
4) The degree of association:
19
1
r=
18
∑ ξ (k )
k=2
If the degree of association calculated is r > 0.6 (close to 1), then
the correlation coefficient of these two factors is strong. If r < 0.5
(close to 0), then the correlation between them is weak.
(4) Elastic coefficient method: it is used to calculate an employment
elastic coefficient to analyze the degree of influence that techno-
logical entrepreneurship has on total employment in the whole
society. It is calculated by formula (10):
E = (∆L/ L)/(∆Y / Y ) = (∆L/ ∆Y ) × (Y / L)
where E denotes employment elasticity of an industry; L denotes in-
dustry employment; and Y denotes the added value of the industry.
4. Empirical analysis of technological entrepreneurship and its
contribution
We applied the measurement models to analyze China's technolo-
gical entrepreneurship. The most insightful results are discussed below.
4.1. Technological entrepreneurship contribution to national economic
development
The promotion and development of technological entrepreneurship
make an undeniable contribution to the economy and society. As to the
economy, the output value of technology enterprises directly stimulates
GDP. Contributions to society can be considered in three dimensions: 1)
output of technology products; 2) employment figures; and 3) taxation.
In addition, the level of technological innovation activity can be mea-
sured by the number of Chinese high-tech enterprises.
4.2. Measurement of technological entrepreneurship contribution
Based on the data from national high-tech enterprises from 1996 to
2014, we calculated the proportion of economic indicators of high-tech
enterprises in terms of output value, export, taxation, and employment.
We also described the index value and its contribution ratio statistics, as
shown in Fig. 1.
Overall, we found: 1) high-tech enterprises continue to grow in in-
dustrial output, number of employees, paid taxes, and overall export
volume. Thus, Chinese technological entrepreneurship is growing
stably; 2) Similarly, proportions of all indicators in the national total
are rising. Technological entrepreneurship including all socio-economic
areas has made an obvious and increasing contribution; 3) In 2008,
economic indicators declined due to the global financial crisis. This
finding illustrated that changes in the socio-economic environment
have an impact on the development of technological entrepreneurship.
However, these indicators resumed their growth trend after 2008.
Accordingly, the state's technological entrepreneurship policy played a
catalytic role.
Technological Forecasting & Social Change xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
4.2.1. Technological entrepreneurship contribution to economic growth
We selected national high-tech enterprise data from the five-year
(6) period (2009–2014) and explained the technological entrepreneurship
contribution to economic growth by comparing the technological en-
(7) trepreneurship value increment to the GDP increment. We used
Formula (1) to calculate the contribution rate of technological en-
trepreneurship to GDP growth as shown in Fig. 2 and Table 1.
k
nology entrepreneurship output value increased from 2010 to 2014. Its
contribution rate to national economic growth is 23.30%–74.35%, with
(8)
an average of 41.49%. This finding showed that technological en-
trepreneurship plays an important role in national economic growth; 2)
The output value of technological innovation increased rapidly and its
contribution to national economic growth also increased significantly
for both 2013 and 2014. This result proved that China's “mass en-
(9) trepreneurship and innovation” support policies succeeded in pro-
moting technological entrepreneurship.
We then used a gray absolute correlation analysis to measure the
correlation between technological entrepreneurship and economic
growth. The number of high-tech enterprises from 1996 to 2014 was
used as a reference sequence and the GDP for the same period was used
as a comparative sequence. Using Formulas (8) and (9), we obtained:
ξ
=
(10) (0.9171,0.8961,0.9280,0.8595,0.8972,0.8364,0.8541,0.8726,0.9477,0.9763
,0.8629,0.4877,0.2864,0.7275,0.6824,0.8095,0.9829,0.9514)
r = 0.8209 > 0.6
The absolute gray correlation coefficient is 0.8209. It implied that
the number of high-tech enterprises and GDP trends are significantly
similar. Thus, the development of technological entrepreneurship and
national economic growth is significantly related.
4.2.2. Technological entrepreneurship contribution to society
The contribution of technological entrepreneurship to society is
primarily reflected in three areas: 1) the creation of employment op-
portunities; 2) the availability of technical products; and 3) contribu-
tions to national taxation. First, technological entrepreneurship has a
potential to create new jobs consistently. Specifically, technology en-
trepreneurship plays a decisive role in stimulating employment, ad-
justing employment structure, and improving employment quality.
Based on high-tech enterprise data from 2009 to 2014, the average
proportion of employment in high-tech enterprises to total social em-
ployment is only 2.13%. We also analyzed the impact of technological
entrepreneurship on the total employment from the elasticity perspec-
tive. Calculated by Formula (10), the elasticity of employment is shown
in Table 2. The average elasticity is 2.79%. Therefore, the employment
will increase by 2.79% once GTP increases by 1%.
Moreover, technological entrepreneurship created a large number of
technical products and intellectual properties. In recent years, the
number of patent applications has grown faster than the national
average. As reported by the State Intellectual Property Office in 2014,
domestic invention patent applications from enterprises amounted to
485,000 which accounted for 60.5% of the national total with 13.6%
increase comparing to the previous year. The number of domestic in-
vention patents granted to this industry was 92,000 million Yuan which
accounted for 56.5% with 15.7% increase comparing to the previous
year. Fig. 3 illustrated the increase of the number of domestic grants for
invention patents. Furthermore, invention patents from technological
enterprises constituted an important source for national invention pa-
tents with an average of 71%. The calculation showed that the total
export value of high-tech enterprises during 2010–2014 increased
continuously, accounting for between 21.64% and 23.81% of the
country's total exports with an average of 22.6%.
4
S. Shan et al. Technological Forecasting & Social Change xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

Fig. 1. Economic indicators of national high-tech enterprises (1996–2014).

Fig. 2. National high-tech enterprises incremental output

value (2010–2014).

In addition, the annual tax paid by technology companies has revenue from secondary and tertiary industry grew by 5.8% and 9.9%
contributed to society. As reported by State Administration of Taxation annually, with secondary tax accounting for 46.3% and tertiary tax for
in 2014, the industry's tax revenue structure continued to optimize. Tax 53.5%. High-tech industry tax revenue grew faster than traditional

5
S. Shan et al. Technological Forecasting & Social Change xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

Table 1 long-term development policies. In summary, we drew meaningful and

Contribution rate of technological entrepreneurship to GDP growth (2010–2014). valuable conclusions and implications as follows:
Index Unit: 100 million CNY
(1) China's technological entrepreneurship continues to develop. Not
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 only is the number of technology enterprises growing, but the in-
dustry's contributions to national output value, exports, employ-
GTP 119,022 140,338.9 152,235.3 175,106.4 211,335.9
ment, and tax are also increasing.
ΔGTP 25,702.9 21,316.9 11,896.4 22,871.1 36,229.5
GDP 413,030.3 489,300.6 540,367.4 595,244.4 643,974 (2) From 2010 to 2014, the industrial output value of technological
ΔGDP 63,948.9 76,270.3 51,066.8 54,877 48,729.6 entrepreneurship accounted for 23.30%–74.35% of GDP growth,
Cp 40.19% 27.95% 23.30% 41.68% 74.35% with an average of 41.49%. It indicated a significant growth trend.
Average Cp 41.49% The gray correlation coefficient between the number of high-tech
enterprises and GDP is 0.8296 indicating that technological en-
trepreneurship is highly correlated with GDP. Thus, technological
Table 2
Technology venture employment elasticity (2010–2014). entrepreneurship has the potential to make more contributions in
the sustained development to the national economy.
Year 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 (3) Entrepreneurs' invention patents accounted for approximately 71%
of domestic invention patents. Additionally, the total export value
Elastic coefficient 1.69% 2.71% 4.74% 2.72% 2.08%
of high-tech products accounted for approximately 22.6% of China's
total exports. Thus, technology entrepreneurship has made a great
industries. In the tertiary industry, tax revenue from information contribution to social progress and China's foreign trade.
transmission, software and information technology services increased (4) Technological entrepreneurship didn't have a clear impact on em-
by 11.7%. Based on national high-tech enterprise data, the average tax ployment with an employment elasticity of only 2.79%. The reason
revenue from high-tech enterprises accounted for 8.49% of national tax might be that China's employment base is relatively large and the
revenue during 2010–2014. Because high-tech enterprises had tax in- technical enterprises' employment was only 2.13% of the total so-
centives, the contribution rate of technological entrepreneurship to cial employment. Meanwhile, technical enterprises require specia-
state tax revenue is clear. lized practitioners and cannot provide opportunities to all em-
ployment groups. This finding suggests new requirements for the
improvement and training of China's workforce.
5. Conclusions (5) The contribution rate of technological entrepreneurship to state tax
revenue was approximately 8.49%. The tax revenue of secondary
We first used China's high-tech enterprise data during 1996–2014 to and tertiary industries noticeably increased in 2014. Particularly,
analyze the development of technological entrepreneurship. In addi- the high-tech industry's revenue growth was faster than traditional
tion, we measured the contribution of technological entrepreneurship industries. Such high growth rate indicated that technology en-
to economic aggregates, social employment, intellectual property, and terprises formed by entrepreneurship will make greater contribu-
national taxation for facilitating policymakers to design detailed and tions to state tax revenue in the future.

Fig. 3. Number of patent applications for invention in service by organization type (2006–2014).

6
S. Shan et al.
This study has the limitation of data availability. Due to the delay of
accessing statistics, we could only acquire data before 2014. Therefore,
our dataset can be improved. As for the measurement of technological
entrepreneurship, the data analysis in this paper is representative in-
stead of comprehensive. If more data are available, we will be able to
analyze technological entrepreneurship from more perspectives which
can be conducted in future research.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (Grant No. 71771010, 71471008 and
71420107025). Besides, we also thank the anonymous reviewers for
insightful comments that helped us improve the quality of the paper.
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Siqing Shan received his undergraduate education at Northwestern Polytechnical
University (1984–1988), majoring in Mechanical Manufacturing; received his graduate
education at Beihang University (1991–1994), majoring in Systems Engineering; and
obtained his doctorate from School of Economics and Management, Beihang University in
2000. He works at Beihang University since 2000 and is a professor of Department of
Information System. His current research interests include big data analysis, technological
entrepreneurship, emergency management, and decision support.
Mailing addresses: Department of Information System, School of Economics and
Management, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, P. R. China.
Telephone numbers: + 86-10-82316619.
Email: shansiqing@buaa.edu.cn
Yingwei Jia is a master degree candidate at School of Economics and Management,
Beihang University, P.R. China, majoring in Information System. Her research interest is
focused on big data analysis and technological entrepreneurship.
Technological Forecasting & Social Change xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
Mailing addresses: Department of Information System, School of Economics and
Management, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, P. R. China.
Telephone numbers: + 86–10-82316619.
Email: jiayingwei@buaa.edu.cn
Xianrong Zheng is an Assistant Professor of Information Technology and Decision
Sciences Department, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia, United States. He re-
ceived his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Queen's University, Canada. His re-
search areas are Computing and Informatics, which involve Computer Science, Computer
Engineering, and Information Technology. His research interests are Data Science (Cloud
Computing and Big Data) and Electronic Commerce (Recommender Systems and Mobile
Commerce). He is a member of the ACM, the IEEE, and the AIS. Contact him please by
email xianrong.zheng@gmail.com.
Mailing addresses: Department of Information Technology and Decision Sciences, Old
Dominion University, Norfolk, VA 23529, USA.
Email: xianrong.zheng@gmail.com
Xiaobo Xu is a Professor of Management Information Systems at the American University
of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. He received his BE in Management Engineering from
East China University of Science and Technology and his Ph. D. in Management
Information Systems from the University of Mississippi. His primary research interests
include information systems project success, business model innovation, research meth-
odologies, e-commerce success, and etc. His published articles appear in Project
Management Journal, Information Technology & Management, Information Systems
Frontiers, International Journal of Information Management, and Internet Research
among others.
Mailing addresses: School of Business Administration, American University of
Sharjah, Sharjah, UAE.
E-mail: xiaobo@aus.edu