Development Zone Innovation Policy Research, Business Innovation And Performance Impact

This study focuses on the relationship between innovation policies of development zones and the firms' innovation capability and performance. The purpose of the study is to explore the effect of innovation policies on innovation capability on the basis of understanding the content and the features of the innovation policy. And then, the paper will analyze if the influence of innovation policies vary with the development phases and types of the enterprises. The whole study was conducted in two stages:The first stage, the research adopted semi-structural interview and cases study, in the purpose of analyzing the characteristics of innovation policy in the context of development zones in China, seeking out the obstacles to innovation, and finding out something about the importance of innovation policy on enterprises. As a whole, the interview validated the original model and paved the way for later empirical study. The results of the case study indicated that it is very important and nothing could be substituted for the effect of innovation policy on firms' innovation.The second stage, based on the literature review and previous stage, 151 companies from more than 12 development zones in 6 districts were surveyed through questionnaires. A variety of statistic methods were adopted in order to confirm the original hypotheses, explore the relationship between the independent and the dependent variables. Finally, the paper summed up the findings and gave some suggestions and advices to the innovation policy of development zones. The conclusions are as follows:(1) In China, innovation policy of development zones can be divided into three dimensions. They are: supply policies, demand policies and environmental policies.(2) The innovation policies of development zones can promote enterprises' innovation capability dramatically. Specifically, the supply policies and the environmental policy have positive influences on product-innovation ability, progress-innovation ability and service-innovation ability. But the demand policies can promote progress-innovation ability only.(3) There is a close relationship between innovation capability and performance of a firm. And the research tells us that innovation capability of firms play an total mediator between the innovation policies and the performance.(4) The results show that there exist differences in the support from theinnovation policies if the development phase or the type of a company varies.It also found that the phase is a buffer between the innovation policies ofdevelopment zones and the firm's innovation capability. So does the type ofcompany. (5) Finances, human resources, technology and information are the mainobstacles to firms' innovation activity and capability.Finally, on basis of the empirical study, the paper gave a brief summary, including the contribution, the deficiency and the future prospect of this study, which will make sense to the further study in the domain of innovation policy.