Analysis Of The Technological Innovation System

With the approach of knowledge economy, the productivity of knowledge has already become the most important determinant of the competitive ability for the nations, industries , or companies. However, no specific nation, industry, or company has any " natural' advantage or disadvantage on this respect. The only advantage of them is to take advantage of all the available knowledge and use it economically. The essential role of the knowledge economy age is, first of all, the innovation and diffusion of knowledge, while transforming the result of intellective innovation into the realistic productivity. The approach of the transformation is technological innovation.According to the American scholars' research, the whole process of technological innovation can be divided into three phases: floating phase, transition phase, and specialization phase. The further investigation proves that all these three phases are coordinate in terms of space, and continuous in terms of time. From the perspective of a single technological project, it can not be in all these three phases at the same time. But to a comprehensive economic item, there are different kinds of technological innovation which lie in all these three phases in the meantime. From the dynamic point of view, the fact that the three phases of technological innovation are coordinate in terms of space and continuous in terms of time are interdependent. Without the coordination in space, there will not be the continuity in time. Similarly, without the continuity in time, there will not be the coordination in space.The performance of technological innovation is in the direct ratio with the resource distribution of technological innovation. Within the economy of one nation, only when the resources of technological innovation are distributed in the three phases according to some rational ratios, can the satisfying innovative performance be achieved. The reason for this is that the technological innovation is a successive process. If there are not enough resources during the floating phase, there will not be many new technologies and new enterprises to emerge. If there are not enough resources during the transition phase, the signif-icant improvement can not be achieved in the process innovation, and a high production cost will certainly affect the competitive ability of one company. If there are not enough resources during the specialization phase, one cannot obtain a preferable market share and, later on, a preferable income. In the meantime, dynamically speaking, the problem which lies in the previous phase will influence the following phase(s). And we should keep in mind that in the era of knowledge economy, the competition has turned from the down - stream to the up - stream.In China, it is a fact that the ratio of transformation in technological production is low. There are many reasons for the lack of introducing the technological production into the real production system, but an important reason among these is the lack of devotion (including capital and labor) during the floating phase. We suggest, in order to introduce more resources into this phase, correlative institutional channels and settings are needed.During the process of technological innovation, the protection of intellectual propertv rights is one of the basic institutional arrangements. The most important production of intellectual innovation and technological innovation is the intellectual products. The biggest difference of intellectual property and physical property is that the former has some characters of public goods. Without the protection of intellectual property rights, the main bodies in technological innovation can not possess the result of the innovation, and the "free- rider" behavior will weaken the motivity of technological innovation. Some survey shows that although the protection of intellectual property rights can not solve the problem of individual benefit and social benefit completely, it can obviously help to encourage the technological innovation. We should use the patent institution to encourage the technological innovation for some independent intellectual property right, and occupy some advanced technologies in worldwide domain. On one hand, the intellectual property rights will lead to contrived monopoly, and therefore lead people to seek for the monopoly profit. But on the other hand, the establishment of the institution of intellectual property right provides the necessary conditions for the flow and share of intellectual information. Only with a clear property right, the owner of the technological fruits will have the incentive to exchange, remise and share it with the society.People tend to ignore another respect of the intellectual property right, which is the institution of information publicity of the patents. This respect of the patent institution actually provides many opportunities for the technological innovation, and it is more effective in this way than it does to encourage the participants in the innovation. Therefore, ina junior country in terms of technological development, the enterprises should make full use of this opportunity provided by the patent institution and apply the "overflow" of the innovative products properly. According to a nation, in addition to the protection of intellectual property rights, it should avail itself to the institution of information publicity in the patent system, accelerate the technological innovation and achieve the continuous innovation.There are varieties of institutions devoted to the R&D in the modern market economy, including universities, governmental research institutes and enterprises. All these institutions cooperate, compete, and learn from each other in some way. In China, it was the research institutes that did most of the R&D, while enterprises and universities were minor roles for a long time, and there were not so much relation among them. The turning from the planned economy to market economy provides the system for the combination of ail these institutes. I he statistics show that there have been large rises in the number and value of technological exchange in recent years.With the rise of knowledge economy, the appropriation of technology has become more and more important. To manage an exchange needs more communications from both sides. At the same time, in order to accomplish the transformation from intellectual innovation to technological innovation, varieties of capital are needed. The way of the combination among the universities, governmental research institutes and enterprises has been changing, and an important tendency is the cooperation in R&D, including transverse division and longitudinal cooperation.In this essay, wre analyze mainly the tendency of cooperation in innovation, and we emphasize on the base, problems and institutional choices in the innovation cooperation between universities and enterprises, and among enterprises themselves. And we raise the problems such as the R&D group, the ascription of intellectual property rights, and the proportion of stock, etcThe combining part of intellectual innovation and technological innovation has been the weak part of innovation. In the recent decades, in order to accelerate the technological innovation, and promote the economic growth within a nation, or a region, people make great efforts to find the approaches to strengthen this weak point. The institution of enterprises incubator is one of the important institutional and technological innovations on this respect.During the floating phase of technological innovation, according to intellectual inno-vation, universities, research institutes, and R&D center in enterprises are all the main bodies of innovation. And all these organizations are greenhouse for the venture entrepreneurs. In terms of technological innovation, venture enterprises are the main body of innovation. And the institution of enterprises incubator is a better way to transform from intellectual innovation to technological innovation, help to turn the potential venture entrepreneurs in the intellectual innovation into the real entrepreneurs, and turn the embryo enterprises which lie in" the technological projects into real enterprises.As an institutional arrangement, the basic theory of enterprises incubator is the social network theory. The research shows that the institutor of enterprises incubator is the perfect organization to help the new enterprise to organize and coordinate all the resources it needs from different channels. And all these channels form a social network needed for initial ventures, and the enterprises incubator is the node of all collection of resources through the social network.It is because of the broad coupling between incubator and social network that this institution can provide a favorable environment for the new enterprises. The advantages of the social network are as follows: it can decrease the uncertainty in communicating and obtaining the information compared to the homogeneous market and hierarchy in the organizations of the classical economy. Also, this system works well in preventing the behavior of opportunism and decreasing the risk. It is always the case that the individuals which enjoy a strong relationship tend to share more information with each other. The social network that owned by an individual is the result of continuous accumulation of information and trust, and it stands for a very important resource. Any behavior of opportunism from any individual to the whole society will cost the loss of his credit, and with so, the exchange cost of the following behavior will rise. Therefore, we can tell that the method of the diffusion of the social information can effectively hold back the behavior of opportunism. And the enterprises incubator is the efficient platform that links the new venture and all kinds of social network.In our country, to develop the incubator industry, we should emphasize cultivating the main body of incubator. Government owns more resources, but it is unsuitable to be the main body. It is better to make the enterprises become the main body and carry out firmilizing operation. At the initial stage of the development, government can intervene as a demonstrating role, but with the development of the incubator industry, government should " get out" step by step. Incubator enterprises should carry out institutional innova-tion, changing from simply offering yard to serving the increase in value of new established firms, thus to expand themselves simultaneously.Venture investment is beneficial to the transformation of science and technology fruits, the emergence of venture enterprises and the rise of high- tech industry groups. But the successful operation of venture investment needs relevant institutional ensurs. Just as Marxist pointed out, the development of productive forces can only be realized in certain production relations. Similarly, venture capital can't take full effect without institutional guarantee.Venture investment firstly requires the existence of investment target - venture enterprise. The premise of venture firms' existence is technology fruit and enterpriser. The venture capital needed for the development of venture enterprises comes mainly fioin venture investment. The channels through which venture capital flows to venture firms include direct investment of investors and direct investment with venture capitalists as an intermediary. Venture capital flows back to investors through the channel of transforming capital such as the secondary market after obtaining benefit, then investors may seek opportunities to make another venture investment. As can be seen, the successful operation of venture capital needs an institutional environment which can promote the advent of technological fruits and enterprisers, a social credit environment where investors dare to invest and a market exit through which venture investment can be withdrawed.Researches show that the partner institution of venture investment, information publication institution of new established enterprises and the institution of inputting capital in batches are effective institutions which join investors and venture investors with venture enterprises. However, the venture investment market associated with high- tech market and high - tech labor market is a kind of monetary market of new type, so it requires an institutional arrangement different from that of the traditional monetary market.The venture investment of our country has attained a certain scale, but the effect is not satisfying, There are not only problems of the investment environment' s not matching with it such as the rough export, but also problems on capital structure and operation. The most important problem is that the firmilizing operation hasn' t been realized yet. From the point of institutional balance, it is imminent to construct the secondary market and the kerb property rights deal market, then we can offer an exit for the withdrawal of venture investment, and induct more venture investment into venture enterprises. Secondly, we should regulate the operation of venture investment to gain the trust of in-vestors. Finally, venture investment should be matched with other institutional arrangements , especially associated with enterprises incubator and joined with other intermediate institutions serving new established enterprises, through which to offer service for increase in value and win the service market of venture investment simultaneously as offering venture investment for new established enterprises.With the deepening .of the technological innovation practice, people have realized more and more clearly that technological innovation isn't an isolated process. It is on one hand a process involving continual evolution and on the other hand a comprehensive process in which each institution interacts. According to the theoretic analysis of national innovation system, the performance of technological innovation is decided by many factors, at the same time, the technological innovation actions are involved in a certain institutional environment, and they have apparent national and local traits. Because institutional environment has apparent "path - dependent" feature, an efficient national innovation system should be constructed according to the national, local traits and the stage of the economic development.To improve the efficiency of our technological innovation system, we should firstly expand the input in technological innovation, increase the output of knowledge and enhance the source of technological innovation. Because only when the "knowledge spill" caused by the government input is much enough will firms invest on knowledge innovation initiatively and will such endogenously growing situation appear as described by Romo.Secondly, we should accelerate the flow of knowledge and improve learning efficiency. The efficiency of the United States national innovation system is based on the fact that the system is dominated by knowledge innovation, is characterized by the advent of many new established enterprises and is supported by dynamic network organization, however, the efficiency of the Japanese national innovation system is based on taking factories as laboratories and taking the relatively static network organization as a career. Under the background of knowledge economy and globalization, it is clearly unwise to take the Japanese national innovation system as the object and it's unrealistic either. Because the Japanese pattern and the development of the East Asia are both challenged nowadays. But to take the United States innovation system as the object is also unrealistic, for today we are confronted with the dual tasks of industrialization and economic knowledgilization. We yet don't possess the supporting system of the United States. If we do like.that, we may not attain the expected object or we may obtain nothing. Confronted with such a situa-tion, we may adopt dual policies: On one hand, we should cultivate and ripen the R&D ability of large enterprises, mainly in industries such as manufacturing, electronics and college education. The purposes of this policy are as follows: Firstly, to improve the core competence of our firms, expand and strengthen advanced industries, cultivate a batch of world famous large firm groups and make them become the strong power for the economic growth of our country;Secondly, to prepare human resource for innovations and start -ups;Thirdly, to form a batch of special suppliers and constitute Japan- styled organization net work of subcontractors through large firms' technology diffusion. On the other hand, in order to obtain the country's dynamic advantage in competiton. We must encourage innovation, apply a series of policies and measures to foster new established enterprises, set up relevant inter mediate organizations, make new established enterprises become the advance force of technology innovation and the reserve force of economic growth.Thirdly, we should let the market and the government exert their selection functions fully. To high - tech industry with definite direction, it' s beneficial for the government to intervene with powerful impulse and make the strategic arrangements, which has been illustrated by experiences of Japan and South Korea. On the contrary, to the high- tech with indefinite development perspective , it is better to exert the market's selection function.Besides market and government, cultural concept and institutional setup also play important roles. So it's also very important to form cultural concept and institution which are beneficial to innovation. Now in China, the most important institutional set— ups are market institution, competition institution, property rights institution, modern enterprise institution promoting learning and institution of the combination of universities, institutes and enterprises and so on.