Spatial Evolution And Dynamic Mechanism Of Chinese University Technology Transfer Networks

Universities are increasingly viewed as the core knowledge source for enhancing urban competitiveness in the increasingly knowledge-based economy.Cities,as the basic units to engage in global competitioness,begin to attach great importance to the cultivation of innovation capacity and the technology transfer of universities.However,existing research associated with university technology transfer(UTT)mainly concentrate on organization level.The role of UTT in urban innovation and economic development is still unclear.Regional innovation system(RIS)emphasizes the role of localized knowledge spillovers and argues that the cognitive and social proximities facilitated by spatial co-location and geographical proximity are conducive to improve the efficiency of UTT.Theory of urban competitive capability associated with network capital,however,highlights the role of urban technological absorptive capacity(UTAC)reflected by network capital in UTT since the restraining effects of geographical distance on UTT are gradually weakened.Recent research related to glocal innovation networks suggest that universities should be regarded as key nodes or bridges of local and nonlocal knowledge sources to avoid regional lock-in.Hence,it is of great theoretical and empirical significance to analyze the UTT from the perspective of spatial networks.By abstracting actors in UTT activities from micro-level to the university-city level,this thesis takes 608 universities and 285 cities in China as the research object to analyze the spatial evolution and dynamic mechanism of UTT networks.There are various channels through which university technology could be transfered.No single channel can fully and truly reflect the whole picture of UTT.Thus,UTT is divided into four modes based on the dichotomy of engagement time and engagement level and university-run technology enterprises,university patent assignments,university-firm co-patent activities and university-regional government co-built research institutes are selected representatively for comparative analysis.Using the methods of OLS regression,social network analysis and exponential random graph model,this paper systematically analyzed the UTT from the perspective of university-city bipartite networks.The main conclusions are as follows:First,the technology transfer capability of university is mainly affected by organizational characteristics rather than location characteristics.The relationships between cities and universities have entered a new stage of mutual achievement,symbiosis and integration,but there is no consensus on the impact of univeristy location on their technology transfer capability.It is found that the UTT capability is mainly affected by internal factors such as research intensity,university level and research funding.Spatial factors are not found to be clearly associated with their performance,indicating that UTT is not limited to city scale.The impact of city on UTT capability is mainly through university research funding.but UTT capability is also confined by the capability of university scientific research,technology transformation and technology diffusion.Neither the technology supply of university nor the technology absorption of city is confined to local area.This finding justifies the necessity to shift UTT research from the place-based view to the network-based one.Second,UTT networks are gradually converging in the process of spatial evolution.From the perspective of network actors,S&T and comprehensive “985/211”universities are the main technology sources and provincial capitals and regional central cities are the main technology recipients.From the perspective of spatial scales,the urban and national scales gradually occupy the dominant positions in the networks of university-run technology enterprises,patent assignments and co-patent activities.In the early stage,university-regional government co-built research institutes was dominated by the national scale,the proportion of urban scale was gradually increased in the later stage.From the perspective of topology structures,four networks are all characterized with stable or enhancing small-world phenomenons,disassortative structures and core-periphery structures and these cities are scattered like nails in space where big gaps with the surrounding cities exist.The main destinations of trans-regional university technologies are Beijing and cites in Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta.Third,the relative mismatch between the supply and demand sides of UTT is the main reason for the coexistence of localized transfer and distant antenna effect of university technology.Although theory related to RIS,urban competitive capability and glocal innovation networks all emphasize the importance of the production,spillover and transfer of university knowledge,there are different views on the role of universities in urban development.This study found that,on the one hand,the quantity of univeristy-run enterprises,co-patents and patent assignments all decreases significantly once the boundary of the city where university is located is crossed,indicating that there is a significant phenomenon of localized technology transfer.On the other hand,once crossing the city boundary,the impact of geographical distance on UTT is significantly weakened,suggesting that geographical distance has a weaker restraining effect on the transregional technology transfer.Overall,localized technology transfer and antenna effect coexist.Therefore,the role of UTT in urban development portrayed by RIS and urban competitive capability both are unpractical.UTT network are multi-scale networks in space.The spatial mismatch between university technology supply and urban technology demand is the main reason for the coexistence of localized technology transfer and remote antenna effect.Famous universities are mainly distributed in cities with high competitiveness,the match between the supply and demand sides is the important reason for localized technology transfer of university.When there is a mismatch,universities prefer trans-regional technology transfer.Alternatively,cities that lack high-level universities tend to acquire university technology from other cities.Fourth,the formation and dynamic of UTT networks are mainly driven by university level,UTAC and geographical distance between university and city.Based on existing research associated with influencing factors of UTT,it is found that UTT network are primarily driven by characteristics of universities(level,type,research funding and technology transfer income),cities(urban technology absorptive capacity,urban economic development and urban openness)and(geographical and technological)distances between the two.Based on the empirical analysis of Chinese UTT networks,we found that university level,urban technology absorptive capacity and geographical distance are the most important forces driving the formation and evolution of these networks.From the perspective of network dynamics,it is found that the impact of university level on UTT network is gradually weakening,while the impact of urban technology absorptive capacity is increasingly enhancing.The restraining effects of geographical distance on univeristy-run enterprise network,co-patent network and patent assignment network are all gradually weakened,while the restraining effects of geographical distance on university-regional government co-built research institutes network is gradually strengthened.University type and research fund both have no significant influence on UTT networks in the early stage,but it gradually shows a positive effect with the evolution of these networks.From the perspective of network types,the impact of university level on long-term UTT networks are stronger than short-term networks.The impact of UTAC on UTT networks with high-level engagement are stronger than UTT networks with low-level engagement.And the restraining effects of geographical distance on UTT networks with high-level engagement are weaker than UTT networks with low-level engagement.There is no significant difference in term of the impact of university research funding,UTT income and urban economic development on different types UTT networks.Urban openness has a significant negative impact on UTT networks with low-level engagement but has no significant impact on UTT networks with high-level engagement,indicating that foreign technology only has substitution effects on lowlevel engagement activities of unvieristy.