Spatial Distribution Of Auto Electronic Industry: The View Of Technical Innovation Diffusion

Affected by globalization and knowledge economies, knowledge is becoming more andmore important and it is the engine of the regional growth. Knowledge by learning is thesource of competitive advantage of firms, regions and countries. So the knowledge is putmore emphasis by the firms. For the auto electronics industry, innovation is the base forsurvival and growth. And technical change and innovative speed is becoming fast, whichneed a mechanism to cross the knowledge and technique. While the innovation is theoutcome of the cooperation among firms and organizations. The technical change is the basefor development, Schumpeter, in his book of the theory of economic development, pointedout that the gale of creative destruction is the engine of economic development andemphasizes that knowledge creation and innovation is the antecedent for technicalimprovement. Gu(2008) argued that the feature of modern economic lies in the push oftechnique and innovation to the productivity, which can be the enhancement for economicdevelopment.The basic mean for technical innovation is to diffuse the innovation to other users,regions and countries. And for the firms the technical diffusion can extend the longevity ofthe products and reduce the innovation risk, which can facilitate the innovative activities ofthe firms and regions, which will be meaning more for auto electronics industry. But forthe society, only by using technical innovation, diffusion and copying can the firms growstrongly and economy grow healthily. In 1990, China introduced auto electronics productsand from then on this industry began to grow. And according to the statistics by the bureauof industry, the value of auto electronics industry is increasing from $12.3 billion to $51.3billion and then to $115.1 billion, which brought economic profit for the firms and for thesociety with great profit and opportunity. So, these data can show the importance of the autoelectronics industry.Along with the development of Chinese auto electronics industry, this industry willexpand fast and the product level will improve. But as a weak in technique in this industry,we need to summarize the experience and make the R&D together to keep up with the newand advanced techniques. To probe the technical diffusion in the auto electronics industrywill help us to understand the mechanism and law of the industry, which can promote the development and technical innovation and to push the technical diffusion. Meanwhile, thispaper can bring forward some useful suggestions for the firms to make reasonable strategiesfor technique innovation and upgrading, which can give the directions for the autoelectronics industry. Of course, this industry, as a new rising industry, stands for thetechnique development level, which will enhance the technique level by improving itstechniques.Theoretically, there are many research outcomes about the innovation in the autoindustry, and more and more research about technical diffusion are analyzed, but for the autoelectronics industry, the technical diffusion is seldom discussed and there almost no researchabout the relation between technical diffusion and spatial distribution. This paper, based onthe above, will discuss their relationship and put forward the reasonable path for the autoelectronics industry.In order to mess up the regret in research, this paper believes that, hypothesis one:neighborhood effect is not positive on the level of the country but positive in the level ofregions. Besides, implicit knowledge is diffused by the spin-offs but with the limitation ofregions; explicit knowledge can go fast with broad regions and hypothesis two: level effect ispositive and because of the difference in the functions and roles in the industry chain, thereis clear difference among the up and down industry.Using the data of statistics and survey, we get the following basic conclusions:Firstly, neighborhood effect is not positive on the level of the country but positive inthe level of regions. Besides, implicit knowledge is diffused by the spin-offs and thishappened in the northeast, east and south of China. And the explicit knowledge is diffusedby the means of transferring manufacture and technique franchising and this happened in theregion of northeast and east.The industry and its sub-industry is neighboring to the innovation diffusion center butits sub-industries including manufacturing and design has a weak effect with neighborhoodexcept the testing . But the regional neighborhood effect id positive.In the diffusion of implicit and explicit knowledge, implicit knowledge is activelydiffused in the northeast of China. So this region is the accumulating place for the autoelectronics industry. And the design has a high barrier for entry due to the big investment,which results in small number of firms. And according to the survey, manufactures diffusetheir innovation among regions in northeast, east and south of china.Secondly, Total speaking, level effect is clear and positive and because of the differencein the functions and roles in the industry chain, there is clear difference among the up anddown industry.To sum up,the spatial distribution is affected by the price, policies, living quality,communication, related firms, knowledge-producing organization and human resource. Thesub-industries are different in the facet of government policies and communication. The design and manufacture take technique park and communication between parks intoconsideration while testing branch pays more attention to the port . The reason is that thedesign and manufacture are in the front of the industry line and they need morecommunication network than testing does. Accordingly, for the location choice of thespin-offs, the auto electronics industry and its sub-industries put more stress on up and downindustry, related serving firms, R&D research center and communication while theforthcoming choice for these spin-offs will lie in the above factors. And most importantly,human resource will become more and more important.Thirdly, the feature of innovation diffusion vary from the industry and itssub-industries.According to the analysis of level effect and the survey of technical innovationdiffusion, the spatial distribution of the auto electronics industry is affected by the price,government policies, living quality, communication, related firms, knowledge-producingorganizations and human resource. And the difference between the sub-industries lies in theconsideration of policies and communication.The innovative points of the paper are as follows:1．This paper firstly combines the innovation diffusion and spatial distribution into oneframework and studies their relation. The previous research focused on the influential factorsto the two variables and divided them into parts.2．This paper firstly studies the spatial distribution of Chinese auto electronics industry.As for the spatial distribution of auto electronics industry, there are two views about it. Onebelieves that there is no innovation in this industry, so there is no distribution and the otherargues that the spatial distribution is not related to innovation diffusion. They all omitted theeffect of diffusion on spatial distribution.3．The previous study believed that this industry is divided into three parts, and they areauto control, auto body and auto loading while Lin from Taiwan and Leask and Parker(2004)argued that design, manufacture and testing can show the difference and featuresof different stages. This paper, based on their points, use their opinion as the analytical baseand study the neighborhood and level effects of this industry and its sub-industry and get ameaningful results.