| China is undergoing the construction of an innovative country where various sci-tech intermediaries are playing a key role. Among these sci-tech intermediaries, production promotion centers (PPCs), as an essential component of the national innovation system, aim at promoting technical innovations from enterprises, especially small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs),Since the establishment in 1992 of Shangdong Provincial PPC, the first PPC in China, PPCs in the country have enjoyed continuous development, contributing significantly to the innovation growth of SMEs, the regional economic growth, as well as the building of innovative China. An operating and managing mode accentuating performance assessment can standardize their dynamic management and strengthen the sustainability of PPCs. Due to the obvious and unique Chinese features, PPCs have witnessed very low availability of published international research literature on their performance assessment. There are a few domestic academic studies, and China’s Ministry of Science & Technology(MOST) has organized continuous evaluations on the performance of National Pilot PPCs. MOST issued in 2007 the Detailed Guidelines for National Pilot PPC Performance Assessment. Because regional PPCs are supervised by corresponding provincial and municipal sci-tech administration bureaus and different regions vary from each other in terms of their industrial economic contexts and technological levels, such studies as PPCs’ performance assessment and their role and efficiency of promoting regional innovation are of academic significance and deserve further scientific explorations.China has seen a rapid growth of R&D expenditures in recent years. When compared with developed countries, however, China needs not only to ensure the overall input of innovation resources, but to improve its innovation efficiency so as to upgrade its investment-driven economic pattern into an innovation-driven one. PPCs are becoming an essential means to link industries and universities and institutes, a bridge to connect various innovation agencies, as well as a major platform to facilitate the industrializations of indigenous innovation achievements. Therefore, it is of greater significance to employ the innovation promoting efficiencies to assess the PPCs’performances than to use such traditional indexes as the financial indexes and the numbers of employees. Only in this way can China reinforce its innovation strength and become an essential source of innovations instead of just a factory for the world.This dissertation studies the performance assessment of PPCs and further explores their role and efficiency in promoting regional innovations. PPCs share such similar functions with incubators as to provide SMEs with technical information, technical consultation and technology transfer so as ω improve their innovative competency and competitiveness in the market. Therefore, it is reasonable to employ methods to study incubator innovation efficiency when we explore the role and efficiency of PPCs to promote regional innovations.An empirical study is conducted to assess the performances and explore the innovation promoting efficiencies of the 63 PPCs in Anhui province, a transitional province bridging the comparatively developed area in southeast China and the relatively poor parts in the northwest. The province is of strategic importance to China’s innovation and balanced development.2011 is the first year of China’s 12th Five-year(2011-2015) Plan and is a milestone for China to upgrade its national innovation system. Based upon the above reasons, this dissertation selects the 2011 data of the PPCs in Anhui for PPC performance assessment. All the data checked by Anhui Provincial Sci-tech Administration Bureau are from the yearly statistics, self-evaluation reports and financial reports of all the 63 PPCs in Anhui. The performance evaluation is conducted on the basis of the Detailed Guidelines for National Pilot PPC Performance Assessment. Considering that the scales, innovation & development capabilities, service outputs and benefits of the 63 PPCs can reflect their inputs/outputs and the resources allocations, the author defines 5 level-I indexes and 18 level-II indexes and gives their corresponding weights. As for the financial indexes, the same transformation formula is employed as provided in the Detailed Guidelines for National Pilot PPC Performance Assessment. Regarding the statistical indexes, this dissertation defined several intervals and gives corresponding values. The linear weighted method is used to assess the PPCs’performances. This assessment shows the top 6 PPCs are all national-level pilot PPCs with better financial benefits, scales, human resources and innovation and development capabilities. Such a result means that this assessment is in conformity with the Detailed Guidelines for National Pilot PPC Performance Assessment and these 6 national pilot PPCs play a good role in the leadership of the other PPCs. As for the independent legal persons, the PPCs at the provincial and municipal levels perform better than those at the county and district levels. Generally speaking, the performances of the 63 PPCs are not good and should be subject to improvement. As for the Level-I indexes, the financial benefits are poor, meaning it is important and urgent for the PPCs to increase the quantities and qualities of their consulting services.To measure the PPC’s innovation promoting efficiencies, this paper defines respectively the quantity of patents acquired by PPC-assisted enterprises and the quantity of commercialized technologies as the two innovation promotion output indexes for two analyses. Total assets (K) and work force (L) are two innovation promotion input indexes for both analyses. The four impact factors are PPC age (AGE), profitable/non-profitable feature (PRO), management staff quality (QUA) and development capability (CAP). The frontier production functions and technical inefficiency functions of PPCs are analyzed to measure their innovation promoting efficiencies.The main contributions and innovations of this study are as follows:1) A methodological system is proposed to assess such sci-tech intermediaries as PPCs. To construct the above methodological system, major factors of these intermediaries are analyzed and the performance assessment is conducted based on regional economic contexts. An integrated method is provided on the basis of the servicing features of the sci-tech service agencies.2) Suggestions on the measures and policies upgrading the functions and performances of sci-tech intermediaries to promote regional innovation are put forward from the perspective of the interactions between sci-tech intermediaries’ functions and essential factors for regional innovation.3) An empirical study is made on the survey data of all the PPCs in Anhui province. The above analyses and innovative studies provide theoretical and decision-making support for the construction of regional innovation systems in other provinces and cities in China.
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