Academia-industry collaboration and regional innovation convergence in China

This article investigates the impact of academia-industry collaboration (AIC) on regional innovation convergence in China from the perspective of innovation ecosystem. Using the methods of σ-convergence and β-convergence, we explore the effect of AIC on innovation convergence among provinces over time, taking into account of the flow of talents, regional economic development level and degree of openness. AIC is classified into two types: university-industry cooperation (UIC) and industry-research-institute cooperation (IRC). We find that while innovation performance is divergent across regions, AIC can significantly weaken the divergence, and the effect of UIC on the convergence is especially obvious. After dividing the country into eastern, central and western subsamples, we find that AIC significantly promotes regional innovation convergence in the central area. Both UIC and IRC significantly inhibit innovation divergence in the central sample. Furthermore, UIC also shows the same effect in the western sample.