The Structure Of Innovation Networks Of China’ Equipment Manufacturing Industry

Although the scale of China’s equipment manufacturing industry has surpassed all the counturies to be No.1 in the world, the overall industrial suitaton still has some dilemmas, such as lack of innovation awareness and ablity, low value-added products, the weak market competitiveness. Since the 2008 financial crisis, some developed countries have started to call their heavry industry back, like the USA re-industrialization, the Germany industy 4.0, the China’s equipment manufacturing industry faces a new challenge. Hence, innovation has become the key factor driving economic growth and improving the core competitiveness. As an engine to drive the industrial upgrading, equipment manufacturing industry can be the best choice for indigenous innovation.Innovation network, which can utilize internal and external resources, has become the hot spot in the research field. And from the economic perspective, there are two main research branches which are new regionalism and global production network. To be brief, the former emphasizes local network and the embedness of innovation, and the latter underlines the global connection. Recently some scholars have paid more attention to one-sidedness of single scale, some new thorories appeard, such as the local buzz-gobal pipline and beyond new regionalism.However, most research didn’t notice the different composition and spatial of network derived from the diverse types of industry and innovation mode, namely the STI and DUI, which have relyed on different approaches, techniques, and scales where the partners located. The industry based on STI-mode refers to the use of scientific knowledge in the development of new technologies that form the basis of new products or processes within the firm. The DUI-mode refers to on the job problem-solving typically involve a large component of tacit knowledge.Those aboving drawbacks are obvious in the construction of China innovation system, especially the emphasis too much on local innovation network. China has made efforts to use its administrative capabilities to create industrial parks, which are often equipped with research and education organizations, incubators and service providers to stimulate innovation dynamics, among which the most representative two are Shanghai Lingang and Tianjin Binhai equipment industry bases. During the recent decades, with the economy’s globalization, industry chain lengthened, world wide resourcing, producing and purchasing, the existence of the physical ingredients of functioning clusters, however, is no guarantee for local cooperation and innovation. Under the new situation, we must now ask:for equipment maunfacuring industry, what’s the best spatial scale and compositon of innovation network? Is the geographical proximity necessary? What’s the dynamic mechanism of innovation performance?This disseratitaion integrates related theories like industry cluser, global production network and the space of knowledge production, focues on the innovation netwotk of equipment maunfacuring industry to explore the influence of innovation performance. The coorperation is divided into STI-mode interaction (with consultants, universities, and research centres) and DUI-mode interaction (i.e. with suppliers, customers and competitors). It further controls for the geographical locations of partners.Specifically, the analysis comparing the scientific with technological networks shows how the benefits to firms of collaborating within regional, national, and international innovation networks are affected by the knowledge endowments of the region within which the firm is located.Some conclusions display as follows:(1) Based on graphical analysis and an empirical analysis of co-invented patents issued by the State Intellectual Property Office of P.R.China from 1985 to 2012. We reached three conclusions about the structural and spatial character of the innovation network of Chinese equipment manufacture industry. Firstly, our systematic examination has identified a rapid growth of patents and significant changes of actor composition from 1985 to 2012, which shows the rise of privately owned enterprises and universities around 2000, with universities standing out as the most significant and strongest actors in the process of building innovation networks, while state-owned enterprises only dominate some specific fields. Secondly, city level is the major geographical scale of collaboration in developed cities; while undeveloped cities tend to cooperate with competent ones at provincial or national level. On the contrary to some studies on the spatial character of innovative collaboration in China, the results show that the spatial pattern of geographical distance and scales of collaborative innovation have stabilized since 2000. Last but not least, innovation policy and management might benefit more from the spatial map of different actors. The research finds that universities are more active on the provincial scale, research institutes are more local, privately owned enterprises tend to corporate with local actors and stated-owned enterprises are more nationally oriented. A decline of the importance of the provincial scale is evident.(2) It uses a purpose built survey of 298 questionnaires distributed in fairs, by means of a logit regression analysis. We analyze the technology network of China’s equipment manufacturing industry and get the following conclusion as followed. Firstly, firm attribute is the most important actors to affect innovation performance. Genearally speaking, state-owned and the big privately owned enterprises can get the dominant or recessive govermant supports to be more innovative. The innovation partner is given priority to vertical cooperation. Nation is the most importan spatial scale, while province is the least. Secondly, the requirements of different firms can cause the diverse behavior and motivation to display selection preferences. The objective of a start-up firm is existence to choose DUI-mode, and the coorperation with knowledge partners will rise along with its innovation development. Furthermore, equipment manufacturing industry bases on the comprehensive knowledge and general technology diffusion; the most important partners appear more like an island and do less for local innovation. The spatial distribution of equipment manufacturing industry showed a significant effect of weak geographical proximity distribution.(3) The analysis has explored which factors can affect the innovation performance. The results are consistent with the expectation that firms benefit from interacting with a wide range of trans-local partners, particularly international, both for scientific and technological network. While government support, the level of R&D investments or education in the city in which the firm is located are related with radical innovation, does not have any direct effect on its potential for innovation in technological network. Due to the high threshold of fabrication, materials, mould and detection, together with risk of market failure and government failure, the main actors normally are university and research institute, the prestige of research organization can adjust the influence of network, but the amout of local university has no significance to the innovation.At last, the dissertation raises some suggestions for the innovation improvement of China’s equipment manufacturing industry:to cultivate innovation capability in vertical technology diffusion, to establish general technology alliances in multiple production processes, and to collaborate in regional innovation in large industrial zone.