The Researches In Network Innovation System Of Industrial Cluster In Metropolitan Suburbs In China

Since 1990', industrial clusters have been developing into economic organizations with certain characteristics in global economy. The firms in clusters crate large-scale economy and externality by interactions and cooperation among firms. The clusters have given an impetus to regional economy or all nation's development. More and more countries look on the industrial cluster strategy as an important strategy in fostering firms and spurring on economic growth and increasing urbanizations. The clusters thus play an important role in promoting regional economy and crate employee opportunities. It is of great significance for theory and practice to explore the network growth of cluster and it's innovation mechanism.Although the cluster economy in our country are universal social phenomenon, clusters in China exist many problem such as immaturity in network, poor innovation driving force etc compare to developed countries. To solve these problems, it is necessary to employ practice, theory and abstraction to deal with. Our academic circle in recent years pays great attention to the cluster. Experts put forward different explanation about the nature of industrial cluster from their perspective. Different to their research, the present dissertation put focus on cluster network and cluster innovation. More important, our aim of research is oriented in the suburbs of big-city instead of the cluster in small cities in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces.On base of review of relative theories of industrial cluster, the present dissertation made research on definition, characteristics of cluster and cluster network innovation system. Point out that the interaction among behavior units is innate character and those that many firms gather together without interaction among units are not exactly the industrial cluster. The essay continues with two main threads: the research on cluster innovation system and the research on the development in suburbs of big-city.Now days, the innovation capacity of many of our industrial cluster in our countries is not strong because of two reasons I think: one is the immature innovation system and network effect that lead to poor interactions among the behavior units; the other is poor innovation environment that can not support innovation. To deal with the first problem, the essay designed five mechanisms to illustrate. The first one is synergic innovation mechanism which solved the problem why the behavior units in cluster must cooperate and employ synergic innovation. Saving R&D expenses, integrating regional resources, sharing responsibility of risk are the main intentions. The second one is knowledge-flow mechanism. It pays much attention on the significance of knowledge in innovative clusters. The quality and quantity of knowledge resource in cluster influence the innovation quality and its innovation rate. The third is informal exchange mechanism. The role of informal networks in the development of regional clusters has recently received a lot of attention in the literature. Informal contact between employees in different firms is claimed to be one of the main carriers of knowledge between firms in a cluster. This paper examines empirically the role of informal contacts in a specific cluster. We analyze whether the engineers actually acquire valuable knowledge through these networks. We find that the engineers do share even quite valuable knowledge with informal contacts. This shows that informal contacts represent an important channel of knowledge diffusion.The second thread is the research on the economic development of metropolitan suburbs. The five mechanisms above need the detailed condition and environment to work which many cluster can not provide. That's one of the main reasons why our clusters own strong innovation capacity. Take knowledge exchange mechanism for example, there is nearly no decent universities or lab in most our clusters and thus the knowledge exchanged was not very good which led to poor innovation capacity. The second thread is the study on the environment that enables the network innovation system to fulfill well. The two threads were tied by "diamond theory" by Porter. The theory has been constructive innovation which was used to study the regional or industrial innovation capacity, especially the theory can explain why in a certain district, a certain industry could succeed but others could not.According to "diamond theory", I illustrated the main four factors that influence the innovation capacity in the cluster in metropolitan suburbs. The paper made research on the status quo of our clusters first. Then point out that the strategy giving priority to the development of metropolitan will provide a very good opportunity to spur on the suburbs' economic development thus the construction of innovation cluster in the suburbs become very important because they can give an impetus to the other clusters and to the regional economic development. On the other hand, it is feasible to foster the innovative clusters in the suburbs because they possess both metropolitan functions and radiations, area condition and perfect supporting systems such as the modern logistics, money market etc. The thread concludes that: the government should take various measures to guide to fostering innovative clusters in suburbs because of their necessity and feasibility.From my researches, I drew the conclusion for the innovation ideas: 1 .The paper puts forward the definition of network innovation system of industrial cluster based on previous review and illustrates its structure. The system is composed of core value system, supporting value system and environment value system. Considering the three value systems and five mechanisms, a model of network innovation system was designed. 2. The paper put the university and lab in the core value system instead of in the supporting value system like most researches. Illustrate the changed role of university in scientific research and the important role the university played in the innovation system. 3. The paper studied innovative clusters under the specifiedcondition--metropolitan suburbs which boasts the more practical or immediatesignificance. Network innovation system is the key factor to keep competitive advantage of cluster. The research on cluster in metropolitan suburbs enriches the theories of industrial cluster, meanwhile it is useful to the construction of suburbs. 4. The paper connected the research on the clusters with the urbanization and suburbanization which is a new trend in cluster study. The industrial cluster is the effective carrier to increase the regional innovation capacity especially in the new-town construction. The paper brought up a new model for suburban new town development: the integration of industry, research and housing.