西方创新地理研究评述

The progress and prospect of innovation geography research in the West

创新是区域经济发展的重要驱动力,创新地理研究得到了西方地理学界的重视。追溯西方创新地理研究的发展历程:从创新的空间特征描述,经区域创新集聚机制探索,到跨区域知识传播和创新网络演化机理的研究;系统梳理了20世纪90年代以来西方创新地理研究的代表人物、空间尺度、研究内容、主要观点和研究方法。研究发现:西方创新地理研究存在以下缺憾:重视创新组织,忽略了创新个体和组织之间的互动关系研究;重视理论反思,缺乏对实证研究的重视和方法的突破;欧美研究占绝对主流,缺乏基于发展中国家实证的反思。因此,未来应围绕着创新主体,运用定量和定性相结合的研究方法,建立基于中国等发展中国家实践的新型创新地理研究框架。

Innovation rather than land, capital and other factors becomes the new driver of economic development. In recent 35 years, researchers have made fundamental contributions to the understanding of the innovation process by exploring the location of R＆D centers, the geography of high-technology industries, the diffusion of knowledge, etc. This paper systematically examines the history of the Western research on innovation geography, by summarizing the main researchers and their analyzing spatial scale, methodology and main findings every 5 years from 1991 to 2015. From 1991 to 1995, researchers mainly illustrated the geographical features of innovation activities as concentration in places. From 1996 to 2000, researchers explored the dynamics of innovation agglomeration, by focusing on the role of institutions. The period of 2001 to 2005 witnessed the booming of innovation geography research, especially the role of distant knowledge and global pipeline. From 2006 on, the evolutionary turn took the innovation geography research into the study of innovation network description and exploration. In summary, the Western innovation geography research has endured a dynamical development in the last 35 years; however, it has three shortcomings： neglecting the relationship between individuals and the organization, under-development of methodology, and thinking little of innovation policies and practices in developing economies. Therefore, we propose three fields to be studied to develop a new theoretical framework based on the developing economies： （1） the role of individual and organization as innovators; （2） the combination of quantitative and qualitative research; and （3） the innovation characters of developing economies.