The Roles Of Higher Education Insititutions In Learning Regions’Innovation

The great productivity burst from the knowledge economy highlights the world. Every main advanced country invests vastly on knowledge innovation. For promoting the self-independent innovation ability of our country,"Outline of the National Program for Medium and Long-term Scientific and Technological Development(2006～2020)"confirmed the "Self-independent innovation, Keep consideration focused on long-project, Supporting development, Leading to the future" guidelines, proposed the overall objectives of constructing the innovative country. The regional innovation system with distinguished features and advantages is the important component of our national innovation system, the outreach of our national innovation system on the regional level, and the important path of constructing and raising the national innovation ability.Higher Education Institutions are the core elements of the innovation system, and the key power of the knowledge innovation. Teaching, research and social service are the three functions of the higher education institutions, and they are consistently reinforced and refreshed in history, pushing the society of human kind forward. Along with the importance of the regional innovation system to the promoting of our country’s competitiveness, the research about how higher education institutions promoting regional innovation begins to be highlighted by researchers in the field of higher education.This thesis belongs to the interdisciplinary study with macroscopic view. The content referred to disciplines on higher education, regional economics and technological history and so on. On the basis of attentive studying and analyzing literatures both domestic and abroad, this thesis using literature survey and interviewing method systematically studied the innovation system issues focused on higher education institutions. Higher education institutions are the main force on the innovation of our country, but by far our innovation system remains many problems, dragging the pace of our country’s self-independent innovation moving forward. The main objective of this research is proposing workable schemes to promoting regional innovation by perfecting higher education institutions and the interactive learning relationships among higher education institutions, scientific research institutions, governments and enterprises in regions—the learning region paradigm, so as to support and strengthening the construction of our national innovation system. On one side this research helps relative governmental apartments making educational and technological policies and especially offers policy basis and theoretical guidance for the reform and development of higher education institutions. And on the other, it makes our higher education institutions further understand their roles and positions in innovation and regional constructions, consistently reinforcing the abilities of teaching, researching, knowledge innovation and serving the society.The learning region discussed in this research is a paradigm for development on the basis of regional innovation, which is about the organizations in the represent of higher education institutions, scientific research institutions, governments and enterprises, learn in regions interactively for innovation, so as to promoting the development of the economy and the society. The ideal learning region fundamentally stimulates innovation in strategy; demands all participants open organizational boundaries, share complementary resources, form networks and learn collectively; utilizes local distinguished culture, stresses cooperative competition and has the multilateral win-win values and entrepreneurship; has relative rules and regulations protecting the operation of learning networks and the consistently reproduce and transferring of knowledge. The essence of the learning region paradigm is innovation. The key factor of the learning region innovation is higher education institutions. The learning region development is highly related with higher education institutions.This thesis discusses the achievements higher education institutions innovate collaborating with other subjects in represent of governments, enterprises, scientific research institutions with higher education institutions as the core element based on the learning region standards:the GDP of our country has reached the2nd place in the world and the overall economic strength of the advanced regions has obviously reinforced; higher education institutions have greatly improved their ability of cultivating talents, doing research collaborating with scientific research institutions and they take advantage of the consistently growing financial fund of governments greatly promoting the expansion of the high-tech industries. So the above demonstrated the feasibility constructing the learning region innovation system within our country.Then the thesis moves on discussing the many problems in our national innovation system with higher education institutions as the core element based on the learning region standards:higher education institutions’ ability of doing basic research is not strong enough, lacks of innovative talents, the ability of R&D is limited, very few collaborations between higher education institutions and themselves with other subjects in the represent of scientific research institutions, enterprises and governments, the rate of knowledge transferring into market efficiency is very low, the overall self-independent innovation power of our country is very weak, lacks of the driving force of the regional self-independence innovation, the innovation schemes are immature, the innovation ability is quite low, lacks of suitable policies and systems for local innovations in regions. The above proves that it is with many barriers to construct learning regions.The thesis analyses the cause of the problems and barriers discussed above with higher education institutions as the core element based on the learning region standards:the innovation system of our country mainly stays on the national macro-control level, it mainly utilizes the national regime and relative policies for innovation and the development of the economic society, still lacks of the strength on exploiting regional innovation system; the orientation of the government is not clear, the governments intervene too much into the operation of higher education institutions and the market activities, the functions of the governments supporting higher education institutions knowledge innovation and the R&D activities of enterprises are immature, lacks of invest on teaching and research, the relative laws and policies of protecting innovation are insufficient; higher education institutions do not have full autonomy.Eventually the thesis offers the operative countermeasures according to the problems and barriers discussed above. It suggests that when higher education institutions promote the innovation of learning regions it is necessary to comply with the overall devise of our national innovation systems, and at the same time in respect of regional distinguished resources and strategic objectives, by raising the research and cultivating talents abilities of higher education institutions, reinforcing regional innovation networks, making higher education institutions fully cooperating with governments and enterprises, taking interactive learning as the linkage, protecting innovations by relative regulations and services, integrating the resource of policies and capitals, optimizing configurations of intellectual resource, promoting utilization efficiency of knowledge, taking constructing learning regions, enhancing regional innovation abilities as the basic content and fundamental path of realizing national self-independent innovation.The conclusions reviews the main idea and important thought of the thesis, points out the inadequacy and gives suggestions and prospects of further research.