技术学习与创新:经济地理学的视角

TECHNOLOGICAL LEARNING AND INNOVATION:SOME PERSPECTIVES OF ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

技术学习与创新是20世纪90年代以来经济地理学研究的核心领域之一,它与"异端经济学"之间的互动,既促进了经济地理学的繁荣和学科地位的提升,也为"异端经济学"对技术学习与创新的研究提供了独特的地理视角。本文试图全面梳理经济地理学技术学习与创新研究兴起与深化的过程,从地理接近与面对面交流,关系接近与实践社区,制度接近、嵌入、路径依赖与创新场三个既相互争论又高度互补的方面,来系统阐述技术学习与创新的经济地理机制,并针对当前研究的局限性提出了建构高层次综合的技术学习创新与区域发展理论的设想。

Since the early 1990s, technological learning and innovation has increasingly become one of the core research aspects of economic geography. Interacted intensively with ＂heterodox economics＂ such as institutional and evolutionary economics and economic sociology, the exciting development on this research field has not only promoted the coming and thriving of ＂new economic geography＂ and made economic geography approach increasingly the core of social sciences, but also contributed the unique geographical perspective for ＂heterodox economists＂ to investigate the mechanisms of technological learning and innovation. In this paper, we try to review thoroughly the rising and developing processes for economic geographers to open the ＂black box＂ of technological innovation by studying the development of regional economy and high-tech industry with characters of flexibility and specialization, and discuss extensively three main interrelated but contesting perspectives to explain geographical mechanisms of technological learning and innovation mechanisms. The first but also the most popular one is on geographical proximity and territorial innovation model, the second challenges the first and focuses on relational proximity and practice community, and the third overlaps with the first and second but concentrates on institutional proximity, embeddedness and path dependence and lock-in. Each has made strong claims about the bases of the new competition and the dynamics of technological learning and knowledge transfer, but each has some limits on theoretical formulation and empirical research. In order to develop an integrative theoretical fi＇amework to understand the process of technological learning and knowledge transfer in a global economy, we need integrate the above three perspectives and mechanisms into a conception such as ＂creative field＂ and do more complemented empirical researches.