The Internal And External Driving Forces Of Regional Innovation And Its Comparison

FDI and cooperation between government, industry, university and institution, respectivelyrepresenting international technology spillover and inner innovation capacity constructed by localinnovative subjects, possess crucial effects on regional innovation capacity. On one side, throughchannels like demonstration, turnover and competition, FDI could provide higher starting point fordomestic regions to establish late-mover advantage with less input required which can promoteregional innovation; On another, R&D cooperation between government, industry, university andinstitution, based on inherent innovation demand, could integrate innovation resources inside andoutside and bring about more efficient innovation output with the same amount of innovation input.A comprehensive study of the relation between these two innovation forces and innovation outputcould provide some empirical support for our country’s innovation construction in new period.Based on review, analysis and summary of relevant literatures and supported by technologyspillover theory and regional innovation system theory, this article generalized the mechanism ofthe impact of FDI and R&D cooperation between different innovative subjects on regionalinnovation output, established mathematical model, and then empirically examined the relations ofthe two forces to regional innovation output.Studies show that, as representatives of external and internal regional innovation forces, FDI andR&D cooperation between different innovative subjects, could enlarge the scale of regionalinnovation effectively in the overall region, but failed to improve the structure of regionalinnovation output. While based on results from regions with different innovative capacity, as for theoutput scale, R&D cooperation could promote both patent and new product value in both regions,and FDI did the same to the region with higher innovative level, but developed an negative effect onthe output of new product. In the aspect of the innovation output structure, both FDI and R&Dcooperation brought about positive effect on it in regions with lower innovative levels and failed topass the significance test in regions with higher innovative level.