Innovation Performance Evaluation Of He-Wu-Beng Independent Innovation Comprehensive Test Area

Innovation has become an inexhaustible motive force for promoting regional economic and social development, which determines a region’s competitiveness and development potential. In October2008, the Provincial Party committee and government started the construction of He-Wu-Beng independent innovation comprehensive test area in Anhui province, and elevated it to a strategic height of the "independent innovation with Anhui characteristics, speeding up the road ". In the past three years, closely around the overall goal of the construction, the test area continued to emerge the innovation achievements, thus accelerating its economic development, but also speeding up the economic development of Anhui province. Objective evaluation of the regional innovation performance is an important part of the innovation system building to promote. Therefore, evaluating the innovation performance of the test area had an important guiding significance for promoting the construction of the test area, as well as to accelerate the rise of Anhui province.Firstly, this paper summarized the foreign scholars’domestic on regional innovation system research, mainly from the environment, structure and operation mechanism and pattern of regional innovation and construction and performance evaluation of the regional innovation system, etc. By summary on the basic concepts and theories of regional innovation systems, it provided a theoretical basis for the subject.Secondly, this paper analyzed the current situation on He-Wu-Beng independent innovation comprehensive test area, and then from the influence factors of regional innovation, according to the index design principles and the existing research results, this paper set up the evaluation index system of the test area’s innovation performance. In order to evaluate it systematically and scientifically, this paper selected Hefei,Wuhu, Bengbu and other cities in Anhui Province to reference by use of the DEA, and then evaluated their innovation performance, obtained efficiency value of each stage, returns to scale, as well as slack variables. The results showed that:Hefei and Wuhu achieved effective scale and technology at the same time, in the state of optimal size for the DEA efficient; the innovation performance of Bengbu had a certain gap with Hefei and Wuhu, a non-DEA efficient, in the escalation phase of economies of scale; As to the province-wide, all the northern city of Anhui province including Bengbu are non-DEA efficient, only Lu’an and Anqing in the middle of Anhui are non-DEA efficient, only Huangshan, Xuancheng and Tongling in southern of Anhui are non-DEA efficient.Finally, based on the above evaluation results, this paper analyzed the innovation performance of other cities in Anhui province as well as Hefei, Wuhu and Bengbu and identified the barriers to innovation, and put forward policy recommendations to improve innovation performance.