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Different indicators, such as the number of patent applications, the number of grants, and the patent conversion rate, were proposed in this study to analyze the issue of innovation imbalance within and between urban agglomerations from a new perspective. First, a preliminary analysis of the current state of innovation and development of China’s nine urban agglomerations was conducted. Then the Theil index, widely used in equilibrium research, was employed to measure the overall innovation gap of China’s urban agglomerations. The study innovatively used the self-organizing feature map to identify the correlation characteristics of the innovation and development within China’s urban agglomerations and visualize them through Geographic Information Science. The research findings show that the hierarchical differentiation of the innovation and development of China’s urban agglomerations is becoming increasingly clear, and that the imbalance in regional innovation development is pronounced. The imbalance in innovation development within urban agglomerations is more significant than the imbalance in innovation development among urban agglomerations. The analysis indicated that a possible cause is the crowding effect and administrative standard effect of the central city. The key to addressing this problem is promoting innovative and coordinated development between regions.
Wang et al. (Tue,) studied this question.