| Innovation is the cornerstone of sustained economic growth and prosperity. With the development of knowledge, information and network in the global economy, a country’s innovation activities will increasingly be embedded into the global innovation networks, and a country’s resources for innovation thus increasingly break the borders and flow in unprecedented scale and speed all over the globe, causing profound impacts on the innovation performance of a country. Therefore, under the background of innovation globalization, research on the law in terms of the international mobilities of resources for innovation and its impacts on the indiginiou innovation activities in the host country has become a matter of great theoretical and practical significance. In the prominent open innovation conditions, innovation is no longer operated in the traditional self-sufficient manner, but developed into a networked, global activity, resulting in ever evident that corporate, regional and national’s innovation behaviour is increasingly influenced by the international innovative environmental.Most research on the international flow of resources for innovation come from economics and management studies, and focus on innovation resources allocation by enterprises and regions within their borders. In an era of increasingly fierce global competition, it is impossible for enterprise, region and country even with strong technical force to create and possess all the knowledges and resources for technology for innovation on their own. In addition, previous reseach on the flow of innovation flows nelegted the spatial dimension of innovation activies, and Innovation behaviors are assumed occurring in a "point" filtered with space. However, Mobile innovation resources involve a unique movement process in space, inseparable from a certain geographic space, we attempt to investigate the global mobility process, spaial distribution and the impacts of resources for innovation systematically, and fill the gap in the literature.Based on detailed statistical information, with a historical and global perspective, applying economics of innovation, spatial statistics and spatial econometric analysis, this paper first document the global flow of resources for innovation in history since the First Industrial Revolution, then study the level and spatial patterns of international flows of resources for innovation at the national and provincial scale, examine their impacts on indigious innovation performance of Chinese provinces. Finally, we summarize the national mesures and practices respond to the international flow of resources for innovtion in typical countries.Based on literature, we first trace the historical trajectory of global mobility of resources for innovation since the First Industrial Revolution and find that the relocation of centers of Industrial Revolution go along with the massive mobility of innovative resources, which enable a higher level of latecomer countries catch up by technology-industrial system upgration and resulting in the replacement of nation powers. The follow-up countries who catch up and become prosperious by inheriting the innovation resources from the incumbent advanced counties seems to have the following characteristics:first, creating stable political conditions and building up pre-productive institutions; second, stedy domestic market grow; third, completion of initial capital accumulation; fourth, strong industrial manufacturing base; fifth, the government adoption of production-promoted policy; six, desirable knowledge and cultural environment; seven, hard-working people and commitment to invetion and creation.Then this article studies the current characteristics and trend of international spatial distribution and flow of resources for innovation in term of innovative talent, technology, R&D international investment. Overall, the total resources for innovation have been increasing rapidly, but its distribution is extremely uneven, with the developed countries still accounting for a larger portion of the global innovation resources. Since the global financial crisis, innovative resources in the developed countries have slacken, while the developing countries, especially emerging economies, increase their investemt in innovative resources substantially, leading to the traditional U.S., EU and Japan formed "triangle" pattern gradually changed to a more multi-polarization pattern. Specifically, the international international flows of innovation resources has the following characteristics: In respect of talent resources, whether measuring science and technology human resources, R&D personnel, researchers, highly skilled migrants or international students,the total are growing steadily. Developed countries as the world’s most important personnel education and employment base, are still the most important human resource concetrating areas. The United States as the world’s most economically developed technology superpower, still accepted the largest number of all kinds of foreign talents. With the rapid economic development and the improvement social conditions in some developing countries, and especially the negative impacts of the financial crisis on the economies of developed countries, more and more talents are returning to the developing countries. In terms of the technology resources,global patent applications achieve a steady growth over the past decade.Global patent applications mainly come from the five largest patent offices United States, Japan, Europe, China and South Korea.In recent years, the growth of patent applications in China, the United States and South Korea is increasing, while Japan and the EU have been mired in sluggish growth. Particularly, patent applications from China top the world in2011for the first time. The global centre of exports of high-tech manufactured remains Asia. And China is the world’s largest exporter of high-tech products in2010, accounting for22%of the global high-tech manufactured exports, the U.S. and the EU each accounted for16%, Japan accounted for6.8%. As to financial resources for innovation, since the world’s R&D funding break through one trillion U.S. dollars in2007,World R&D investment continues unabated even in the shadow of the economic crisis. Overall, the emerging developing countries become an important source of global R&D investment and their R&D investment increase faster than in the developed countries. In2009, global proportion of R&D expenditure in Asia grows to33%, which leads to0.34,4.58percentage points respectively higher than North America and Europe and for the first time surpass the North America. In the national scale, the three countries with the largest R&D spending are the United States($398.2billion), China($154.1billion), and Japan ($137.1billion)(at purchasing power parity). This paper further quantitative measure the international flows level and patterns of the innovation resource with the the scicence and technology globalization index in56countries.From2005to2010, the overall flow level of innovative resources in the sample countries showed a steady growth trend. And the index is infuenced negatively by the global financial crisis and increased with the recovery in the economic activities.There are significant spatial differences in the level of innovation resource flows in the sample countries. Global Innovation resource flows mainly concentrate in Western Europe, North America and East Asia and the countries difference in innovation resources international flow is correlated to the countries’ economic development.Overall, developed countries tend to inovle more in the international resources mobility than the developing counterpart. Morevoer, the small open economies participate more than the large economies.Taking China as an example, this paper further examines growth trend, spatial differentiation and its impact on China’s innovation outputs in the provincial scale, and the results showed that:Firstly, the international innovation resources in China is growing rapidly, and it distributed unevenly among provinces.growth rate of International innovation resources in the early21st century is higher than that at the end of the last century. The majority of international innovation resources flows to Eastern coastal provinces, and has now formed three cluster core areas, that are Beijing-Tianjin, the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta core areas. Over time, the international innovative resources is becoming more dipersed. The diffusion direction is an extension to provices along the southwest border and east coast and inland provinces along the Yangtze River. Thus it is expected to form a T-shaped pattern. Secondly,there is a positive spatial autocorrelation in the distribution of international innovative resources. International innovation resource show a polarization tendencies among Chinese provinces.Due to the presence of spillovers,eastern provinces rich in international innovation resources ususally surrounded by province with similar condition and vice versa. Thirdly, the impact of International innovation resources on the provincial innovation is positive.International innovation resources act on the provincial innovation through two pathways.The innovation enhances by the combination of internal R&D and the technology transfer.And R&D by multinational enterprises and foreign skilles workers function as the environment and also contribute to the indiginious innovation. The R&D efforts by the local enterprises account for most of the innovation output. Fourth, there are spillovers effects and spatial heterogeneity in term of the impacts of international innovation resource flows. Innovation activities surrounding provinces has significantly positive effects on the local innovation output. overall pattern of effects from International innovation resources among Chinese provinces is that western provinces are affected stronger than the eastern provinces, while the model’s explanatory power the eastern provinces is also relatively weak. |
PDF Full Text Request