A Study On The Impact Of Network Linkages On Innovation Output From Local And Non-local Perspectives

Innovation is the main driving force of economic development in the knowledge economy era,and the spatial characteristics of innovation and innovation cooperation networks have become one of the key areas of research in economic geography.Although domestic and foreign scholars such as Bathelt have studied the network contacts between innovation subjects or regions and their knowledge spillover and resource sharing effects,and have achieved many remarkable results,most of the existing research focuses on the impact of single-scale network contacts on innovation,with insufficient comparative analysis of network contacts at different spatial scales.The focus is too much on the direct contacts between innovation subjects and their impact on innovation performance,and the attention paid to indirect contacts is limited.Therefore,this article focuses on the three major issues of relational economic geography research,namely,the debate on the internal and external sources of knowledge in the innovation process,the multi-scale of innovation networks,and the importance of local and non-local cooperation in innovation.By using the application data of cooperative invention patents in the biopharmaceutical industry in the Yangtze River Delta from 2001 to 2020,and with the help of Arc GIS software,the temporal and spatial evolution characteristics of local and non-local cooperation innovation networks in the biopharmaceutical industry in the Yangtze River Delta are depicted,and Stata software is used to conduct panel regression analysis of fixed effect models on the impact of local and non-local contacts on innovation in the biopharmaceutical industry in the Yangtze River Delta.The analysis reveals that:(1)The local innovation cooperation network of the biopharmaceutical industry in the Yangtze River Delta is expanding continuously,mainly reflected in the continuous enhancement of network connectivity in the early stage,and in the later stage,it is mainly reflected in the continuous expansion of network scale.The level of urban local contacts in the local innovation network only increased rapidly in the early stage of industry development,and the level of urban local contacts remained stable in the later stage of industry development,while the number of patented innovations applied for through inter-city cooperation within the region continued to increase.(2)The scale and network connectivity of the non-local innovation cooperation network in the biopharmaceutical industry in the Yangtze River Delta continue to improve.In the early stage of industry development,the level of non-local contacts among cities in the Yangtze River Delta was low,but with the development of the industry,the innovation contacts between various cities and outside the region continue to increase,indicating that the importance of external knowledge sources for innovation in the biopharmaceutical industry in the Yangtze River Delta is continuously increasing.(3)There is a mutual promotion relationship between local innovation contacts and non-local innovation contacts.On the one hand,cities can promote the dissemination and diffusion of external knowledge and information through local learning;on the other hand,non-local networks also provide new paths for cities to connect with other cities within the region,and the knowledge resources obtained by cities from outside can also enhance their status in the local network.For innovation in the biopharmaceutical industry in the Yangtze River Delta,local knowledge sources and non-local knowledge sources are complementary to each other and can jointly promote innovation in the biopharmaceutical industry in the Yangtze River Delta.(4)Both local and non-local contacts are conducive to innovation in the biopharmaceutical industry in the Yangtze River Delta.However,too many local or non-local contacts also have a suppressive effect on innovation output.Specifically,on the one hand,too many local contacts can lead to path locking and path dependence;on the other hand,when non-local contacts reach a certain level of strength,the cost of constructing and maintaining non-local contacts will exceed their benefits.Therefore,maintaining an appropriate level of local and non-local contacts is most conducive to innovation in the biopharmaceutical industry in the Yangtze River Delta.