Research On Technology Diffusion In Industrial Cluster

Technology diffusion, technology learning and innovation and so on are the fields in which scholars all over the world enjoy doing research all the times. However, scholars didn't make an agreement about the research that"whether technology diffusion and technology innovation will improve enterprise performance or not". Moreover, technology diffusion researches in the past mainly focused on the domain of enterprise, region, and country, and rarely focused on industrial cluster domain. At present, industrial cluster is playing a more and more important role in regional economic development as the world economy development. Based on the theoretic and practical background, this dissertation mainly disscusses technology diffusion in industrial cluster domian. It emphasize particularly on the antecedents of technology diffusion between different industrial clusters, the antecedents of technology diffusion between different enterprises in the same industrial cluster, and the effects of technology diffusion (speed, scale, and path) on enterprise performance and industrial structure upgrade.After literature review, ANOVA, Crosstabs, Linear Regression, Logistic Regression and structural equation model are adopted and the software LISREL and SPSS are used in this dissertation. Data from 1023 enterprises coming from industrial clusters in Pearl River Delta were analyzed, including those in electronic information, clothing industry, textile industry, furniture industry, household appliance industry and hardware industry etc.. The results of this dissertation are as follows. (a) The path of technology diffusion, the platform of technology diffusion, the length of industrial chain and the environment of cluster have an effect on technology diffusion in industrial clusters. Enterprises coming from industrial clusters in Pearl River Delta carry out technology diffusion by"central source model". R & D institutions, medium, technology providers and seed corporations in the same industry are inclined to become central sources of industrial technology diffusion. And consulting institutions, training institutions, seed corporations and good-report enterprises are inclined to become central sources of universal technology diffusion. (b) Technology learning and innovation makes a negative effect on enterprise performance while technology diffusion makes a positive effect on enterprise performance. Technology innovation includes two stages: Technology and knowledge learning and technology diffusion. At the first stage, technology has little positive effect on enterprise performance, even negative effect on it in short term. At the second stage, as new technologies spread to consumers by various means, it gradually become market standard, and finally increase the demand. So technology diffusion has a positive effect on enterprise performance. (c) The speed of technology diffusion and the inter-industry diffusion scale have a positive impact on industrial structure upgrade. And technology diffusion scale in and between enterprises has a positive impact on it. In order to upgrade industrial structure, it is the most effective way for enterprises to promote the speed and scale of technology diffusion.This dissertation mainly disscusses the technology diffusion in industrial clusters in Pearl River Delta. The innovations of this dissertation are as follows: (a) it studies the mechanism of technology diffusion, and identifies the effects of technology diffusion on enterprise performance and industrial structure upgrade in an industrial cluster perspective, with data from industrial clusters in Pearl River Delta. This may be enrichment and supplement for the related studies in this area. (b) The empirical results indicate that Technology learning and innovation makes a negative effect on enterprise performance, and that technology diffusion is an effective way to improve performance. This conclusion may widen the perspectives of the related research and make the barycenter of innovation research transfer to technology diffusion. (c) SEM statistic technique was used to improve the quality of the research and the credibility of the results, which is a good supplement for the related studies.