26th International Association for Management of Technology Conference - IAMOT 2017

Innovation and technological progress are deemed basic determinants of regional economic growth. Industry-university research synergy innovation is considered to be an important strategy of regional development and economic growth in China. Enterprises, universities and scientific research institutions enhance their independent Research & Development (R&D) ability, at the same time the innovation actors strengthen the synergy innovation with others, which makes the regional innovation performance improved. Moreover, R&D capital and human resource investment of actor is demonstrated the important manifestation to the independent innovation. Nevertheless, together with the serious economic and technological regional difference in China, it has been increasingly recognised in the literature that spillovers of innovation performance from different areas may have an important impact on innovation processes and economic growth. An area’s innovation performance may well be affected by the R&D investment and synergy innovation of other area. Given the nature of knowledge creating activities and the existence of localized knowledge externalities, it might be expected that innovation performance in one area could be affected by innovation performance of other areas. In this context, the spatial dimension becomes a relevant question in determining the effectiveness of such spillovers in the regional innovation performance. In this paper, we use the model of composite system coordinating degree to measure synergy innovation of innovation actors which are enterprises, universities and scientific research institutions, and reveal the relationship between three types of actors. Then we empirically investigate the effects of local R&D investment and synergy innovation on regional innovation performance with spatial econometric analysis technique from evidence of Chinese provincial panel data during 2005-2014. The study finds that not only innovation performance is relevant in determining local R&D investment, but also synergy innovation, which measured by model of composite system coordinating degree. Moreover, with regional innovation performance’s significant spatial correlation, eastern developed regions formed H-H (high-high) collective modality with benign development. A level of regional innovation performance development is required to improve the effectiveness of R&D capital investment and synergy innovation, but R&D human resource investment has little effectiveness on the innovation performance development. Therefore, it is necessary for R&D policies to act in combination with other policies focused on the improvement of socio-economic and structural determinants of regional innovative performance. Thus, this paper developed theoretical concepts and discussed empirical results in order to determine the effective reference for realizing China's regional economic growth and improving China's synergy innovation system. And it will have some important theoretical value and practical significance for the China’s future policy development. Keywords: R&D investment; synergy innovation; innovation performance; spatial correlation