Regional Innovation System Evolution And Performance Determinants Under The Open Innovation Perspective

Along with the degree of globalization deepening and worldwide competition intensifying, nowadays knowledge economy has been gradually playing a leading role. Under this context, innovation has become a key factor in promoting the development of regional economy and gaining competitive advantage. Therefore, it will be a critical research topic to shed light on the relationship between the technological innovation and economic development from a regional perspective. Moreover, the formulation, development and improvement of regional innovation system is of great significance for strengthening the innovative capability, promoting the development of regional economy and further achieving the "Chinese dream" on the road to revival. Focusing on the regional innovation system, this research will first review the related literature on the regional innovation system and open innovation in order to provide a theoretical foundation for the following research. Second, the motives, paths, characteristics and implications of the regional innovation system evolution will be investigated from an open innovation view by introducing this notion into the regional innovation system. On this basis, the research will make an evaluation on the efficiency of Chinese regional innovation system using a DEA method and then analyze regional innovation systems of different regions in China and on which stage they are. Further, the research will investigate the internal influencing factors towards the performances of regional innovation systems, whose components are considered to be exposed to open innovation. Meanwhile, the external factors towards the system performances and the mediation effect of open innovation on the externality of the systems are explored from the perspective of regional innovation externality. Finally, the research concludes and gives implications accordingly with expect to provide hints to the development of Chinese regional innovation systems.Main ideas and conclusions are as follows.First, the research conducts a detailed literature review upon regional innovation system and open innovation. It mainly focuses on the following aspects:origin and development of the related theory, concept and denotation, analytical framework and research outlines, which lay theoretical foundations on this research.Second, the research investigates the evolutionary mechanism of regional innovation systems from an open innovation perspective. As the notion of open innovation is regarded as one general rule which is applied to an open area, the evolutionary path of regional innovation system can be summarized as: closed——semi-open——open. As regards evolutionary characteristics, the resource flows of innovation cross the double boundaries of the enterprise and region; the subject of innovation evolves from Triple Helix to Quadruple Helix structures; the innovation network evolves from the local to hyperlocal one; and the management style evolves from one to multiple hierarchies. In a word, the evolution to open innovation system will contribute to smashing the blockades of original innovation styles and paths, improving the efficiency of resource allocation, promoting the involvement of social resources and specialized social division of labor and further accelerating the speed of knowledge flow and technology transfer.Third, the research conducts an empirical study upon the efficiency of regional innovation systems and their stages. In terms of innovation capability, results indicate that the overall capability improve rapidly in China, while the regional variations have been more and more obvious. For instance, innovations appear most in several technologically advanced areas. It can be seen that China has entered a transitional stage from the pursuit of innovation speed and scale to the pursuit of quality and efficiency. From the perspective of the spatial variations, the innovation efficiency of Chinese regional innovation systems characterizes with agglomerations. Areas with high efficiency values are located around Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan regions, and areas with low efficiency values are located around Midwest regions. As regards the evolutionary states, most of the regional innovation systems are in primary stages with varied evolutionary conditions. For instance, the open innovation in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangdong, Jiangsu and so on are still in their infancy. And some provinces such as Shandong, Zhejiang, Liaoning, Shanxi, Tianjin, etc. enter their semi-open phases, while Hainan, Ningxia, Qinghai and another 21 provinces belong to the traditional closed-system phases of regional innovation.Fourth, the research analyzes the internal influencing factors towards the regional innovation system performance in the context of open innovation. The factors are abbreviated EI, QSI, RO and IE for short, in which El indicates the economic development level, infrastructure and financial condition; QSI indicates the quality and structure of universities and enterprises; RO indicates to what extent this region and the regional innovation network is open-up; IE indicates the innovation efficiency. Results show that these factors relate to each other in the "RO-EI-QSI-IE" chained mode. That is to say, only the innovation subject (QSI) will directly affect the final innovation efficiency (IE); and factors such as RO, El will affect IE value indirectly.Finally, the research will gain insights into the external influencing factors of regional innovation system from the externality perspective. Results show that the system performance are susceptible to not only internal factors, but also some other regional innovation systems around. Concretely, the local innovation inputs have the greatest effect on the innovation outputs in a certain region. And these output are positively affected by the innovation inputs in areas with a radius range of 0-300km, while negatively in areas within a radius range of 300-600km; and they may be negatively affected by the innovation inputs in areas within a radius range of 600-800km, while no effect in areas beyond 800km. These phenomena are due to the superimposed effect of knowledge spillover and resource crowding-out. In areas within a radius range of 0-300km, the positive effect of knowledge spillover towards the local region dominates the negative effect of resource crowding-out, thus presenting a significant positive externality of regional innovation. While in the areas within a radius range of 300-600km, the negative effect of resource crowding-out towards the local area dominates the positive effect of knowledge spillover, resulting in an overall negative externality of regional innovation. In areas beyond 600 km, the effect of knowledge spillover and resource crowding-out are both weak, and mutually offsetting, thus making the overall effect insignificant. Further, the significantly positive mediation effect of open innovation on the externality of the system is validated in the research. Results implicate that the improvement in the open innovation will contribute to promoting resources flow in regional innovation system, and strengthening resources absorbing capability, and further improving the system performances.