Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Research Background
National or regional competitiveness is no longer dependent on raw materials, abundant natural resources, or a solid financial capital, it has been converted into scientific and technological innovation. Innovation represents the technological progress and change, and productivity enhance. In the era of globalization, cities/regions themselves not only exist hostile competition but also cooperation and collaboration. Achieving synergies and complementary synergistic effect for a city group to enhance the competitiveness has become the main development model.
Countries in the world had developed their own culture and characteristic of regional collaboration innovation community, such as the European Innovation and Technology Institute is a key driver who maintains Europe's sustainable economic growth and competitiveness. It promotes the innovation capability of the EU and its Member states to face the enormous challenges which came from European society. The main objective of the innovative community for US is to achieve the integration of intellectual property and the collision of human capital and financial capital. (Su & Tu, 2013). It can promote the system to fully assume the main tasks of the US R&D competitiveness, while promote the development of clusters as the core of investment and economic development. From the 70s of last century, Japan has implemented a series of regional science and technology policy to promote the
“regional innovation strategy support program” which launched in 2011. It was designated to improve the regional innovation environment, support the innovation priority area, and cultivate the characteristic competitive industry cluster which has the sustainable competitive ability (Xue & Wu, 2014). The Dutch Government set up the Dutch Innovation Platform in September 2003.
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Platform members include government, business and intellectual celebrities;
the Dutch Prime Minister himself is as the chairman of the platform. In 2007, the Dutch Innovation Platform (Phase II) was launched and continued to enhance the competitiveness of the Netherlands (Deng, Li, & Chu, 2009). A Korean regional innovation system is an important science and technology initiative launched by the Korean central and regional government in the 1995.
Among provinces, there are significant differences in the degree of economic development. Metropolitan areas have traditionally been industrialized areas, so the Korean government has tried to bring up regional clusters. They have established an organization for S&T promotion in their administrations, increased their S&T budgets, and strongly promoted cooperation between innovation actors in their regions.
The innovation community of the above countries, the common characteristics of the government, enterprises, universities, research institutions to form a partnership, the establishment of several different areas of innovation platform. For example, the Climate KIC (The Knowledge and Innovation Communities), KIC InnoEnergy, European Institute of Innovation &
Technology (EIT) Digital Labs and so on. The Dutch Innovation Platform identified six research areas: flower & food, high-tech system and material, water, creative industry, pension & social security.
The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Collaborative Innovation Community is an early case of China in developing collaborative innovation community. The region is a world-class city cluster with Beijing as its core. Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei have their own position according to their different advantages. Tianjin is an economic center in the north, an international shipping center in the north, a gathering area for advanced manufacturing industry, a demonstration area for financial innovation and application, and a center for Hebei Province. Hebei is the center of economic and technological innovation. Hebei province is an important base for new industrialization, a new urbanization and urban-rural demonstration area, an important shipping and logistics base in the north, and a support area for the ecological environment of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei.
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The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Collaborative Innovation Community is a destiny community, a community of interests and a community of responsibility. Collaboration among regions can enhance the competitiveness of the regions in which they work together. Beijing promotes Zhongguancun to cooperate with Tianjin, and Tianjin in key areas, including Tianjin Binhai New Area, Baodi ; Hebei Tangshan, Chengde, Langfang, Baoding, Zhangjiakou(Big Data Cloud Computing Industry). Shijiazhuang (Integrated circuit packaging and testing industry) and other regions, they jointly established a strategic collaborative relationship. This community promotes the non-governmental exchange activities. And it plays a key role in promoting the interaction and collaboration among firms and institutes in this region. A lot of researches in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Collaborative Innovation Community in the past use the expert interview and other qualitative research. Furthermore quantitative studies explored the industrial concentration of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Collaborative Innovation Community which used the Geospatial aggregation index such as HHI (Herfindahl-Hirschman Index). However, less research use systemic point of view, expert decision-making methods to explore the key actors, operating mechanism, success selected factors, operation performance for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Cooperation and Innovation Community. One of the motivations is to use multidisciplinary expert decision-making method to conduct in-depth research. Regarding the key actors and successful selected factors, literature review will be adopted to extract the key actors, the weight of the key actors obtained by Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL), in-depth interviews will be adopted to extract the factors and index from the expert consensus, moreover the weight of the factors and index is obtained by ANP (Analytic Network Procedure). Based on the weight of ANP, and then sorted by expert rating.
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