Geographic scale has been central to the debate on studies on technological innovation. Through a brief examination of China's science and technology history since the 1950s, this study suggests that the role of the state is crucial for understanding the structuring, restructuring and performance of China's innovative system. During the pre-reform era, China's national innovation system was a centrally commanded and segregated system with a clear orientation towards strategic weaponry development, which led to its imbalanced performance in military and civilian technology development. Since the early 1980s, China's national innovation system has experienced shifts towards civilian-orientation, increasing roles of industries, and closer interactions among industries, universities, and government. The incremental approach of reforming China's national innovation system is strongly shaped by its gradualist strategy in its political and economic reforms. During the process, the Chinese government has been very active in guiding the changes. As such, studies at the national scale are indispensable for understanding the dynamics of innovation, in addition to studies at the global and local/regional scales.
The success of Asian economies (first Japan, then Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and, more recently, China and India) has made it tempting to look for an Asian model of development. However, the strength of Asian development lies less in strategies that reproduce successful national systems of innovation and more in the capacity for institutional change to open up new development trajectories with greater emphasis on knowledge and learning. The select group of contributors demonstrate that although there are important differences among Asian countries in terms of institutional set.
Shaping China's Innovation Future employs a thorough analysis of a combination of factors including: the role of law and China's legal system; economic theory and the development of China's economy; China's educational, intellectual property, and financial systems; China's innovation capacity; and Chinese culture. Though the recommendations on how to improve China's technology commercialization system are unique to China, the scope of the research makes the conclusions found here applicable to other countries facing similar challenges.
China and Russia - two giants in the group of emerging markets - continue to attract wide attention as evolving science and technological superpowers. However, both countries demonstrate mixed success in innovation development and are struggling to overcome the legacies of the former state planning system and accelerate their transition to effective national innovation systems. This study employs a number of theoretical constructs and evidence sources to evaluate the existing path dependencies and compare the achievements of China and Russia in fostering development and effective systems of innovation and governance. A detailed analysis of the state planning legacies is provided together with a study of innovation system transformation and the role of public policy in (re)building national innovation capabilities in China and Russia. The system-evolutionary approach is applied to provide a detailed assessment of the strategic effort undertaken by the governments of both countries. Several government failures and path dependencies seem to prevent the nations from implementing a more effective reform. Yet, there are a number of complementarities and opportunities for mutual learning where both countries can benefit from closer collaboration. The challenges of turning universities into research institutions, increasing productivity of state-owned enterprises, constructing effective science parks, promoting indigenous innovation, ensuring more even distribution of innovation development across regions, turning 'brain drain' into 'brain gain', and improving intellectual property rights protection are common in Russia and China. As a lens through which to identify and assess innovation systems transformation, the thesis examines emerging nanotechnology development in China and Russia. Nanotechnology is a new science and technology area where policies seem to be independent of many system weaknesses and contribute to breaking existing development lock-ins due to its explorative nature and assumed transformative capacity. Yet, a number of path dependencies do exist in this area but seem to play a marginal role in its progression. An early assessment is provided of nanotechnology impacts on broader socioeconomic development of China and Russia in six key areas: institutional development, knowledge flows, and network efficiency; research and education capabilities; industrial and enterprise growth; cluster and network development; regional spread; and product innovation. The conclusion summarizes the main findings, revisits the major research questions, links the analysis to the conceptual framework, and offers a number of policy recommendations that seem relevant to both Russia and China with a need to increase the transparency of innovation policy, improve the regulation for innovation process, and promote growth of the private sector to ensure effective technology transfer. Results from this study have been reported in various forms in the author's articles published in Research Policy, Science and Public Policy, Review of Policy Research, International Journal of Economics and Business Research, and European Journal of Development Research as well as presented at a number of international conferences (see Appendix).
China abruptly became the second largest economy and, at the same time, the second largest R&D spender in the world, aiming openly to become an innovation powerhouse that holds the edge in critical technologies. The significant consequences on global trade flows, international security, governance and economy are increasingly drawing the attention of policymakers, academics, and industry leaders worldwide. The study highlights the main characteristics and trends of the national innovation system in China, as well as its strengths, challenges, and prospects. It examines in detail public policies, funding mechanisms for innovation, inbound and outbound FDI, IPR mechanisms, public perception towards technology, priority industries, and other factors. It thus identifies the main innovative actors of the system, including government, industry and research institutions, highlighting the patterns of interaction among them. The findings are showcased in a focused case study on the AI industry and further serve to advance policy recommendations for the EU. Traditionally, China has made more effort and has achieved better results in understanding and learning from ‘the West’. It is now vital for other countries to better understand China.
This report assesses the current status of China’s national innovation system and policies, and recommends improvements required in both the policy and institutional environments for China to succeed in promoting innovation through a market-based approach.
An increase in global access to goods and knowledge is transforming world-class science and technology (S&T) by bringing it within the capability of an unprecedented number of global parties who must compete for resources, markets, and talent. In particular, globalization has facilitated the success of formal S&T plans in many developing countries, where traditional limitations can now be overcome through the accumulation and global trade of a wide variety of goods, skills, and knowledge. As a result, centers for technological research and development (R&D) are now globally dispersed, setting the stage for greater uncertainty in the political, economic, and security arenas. These changes will have a potentially enormous impact for the U.S. national security policy, which for the past half century was premised on U.S. economic and technological dominance. As the U.S. monopoly on talent and innovation wanes, arms export regulations and restrictions on visas for foreign S&T workers are becoming less useful as security strategies. The acute level of S&T competition among leading countries in the world today suggests that countries that fail to exploit new technologies or that lose the capability for proprietary use of their own new technologies will find their existing industries uncompetitive or obsolete. The increased access to information has transformed the 1950s' paradigm of "control and isolation" of information for innovation control into the current one of "engagement and partnerships" between innovators for innovation creation. Current and future strategies for S&T development need to be considered in light of these new realities. This book analyzes the S&T strategies of Japan, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and Singapore (JBRICS), six countries that have either undergone or are undergoing remarkable growth in their S&T capabilities for the purpose of identifying unique national features and how they are utilized in the evolving global S&T environment.
The second edition of this exhaustive work (ECIIE) comprehensively covers the broad spectrum of topics relating to the process of creativity and innovation, from a wide variety of perspectives (e.g., economics, management, psychology, anthropology, policy, technology, education, the arts) and modes (individual, organization, industry, nation, region). This edition includes some 400 topical entries, definitions of key terms and concepts and review essays, from a global array of more than 250 researchers, business executives, policymakers, and artists, illuminating the many facets of creativity and innovation and highlighting their relationships to such universal concepts as knowledge management, economic opportunity, and sustainability. Entries feature description of key concepts and definition of terms, full-color illustrations, case examples, future directions for research and application, synonyms and cross-references and bibliographic references.
This book closely examines how universities and higher educational institutions have come to occupy a very significant position in the Chinese national Iinnovation system (NIS) in the last two decades. It looks at the growth, structure and current status of higher education in China and discusses how these world-class institutions are intimately intertwined with the rise of China in the global knowledge economy. It studies themes such as the impact of Chinese universities on industry, business enterprises and national development, relevance of higher education to policies related to industry development, reform measures to improve research intensity and quality of teaching, and internationalization and globalization of higher education. Based on sound empirical research, it also explores concepts like academic entrepreneurship, start-ups and entrepreneurial ecosystems. A key text on the Chinese education sector, the book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of higher education, Chinese studies, science, technology and innovation studies, business economics and management, academic entrepreneurship and public policy.
