Does one size fit all? The governance mode and strategic position of cluster innovation platforms

摘要

Despite its significant role, governments encounter a policy dilemma how to intervene in the economy to promote industrial cluster upgrading while not foregoing market driven innovation. This paper focuses on government-supported innovation platforms within industrial clusters. Through a comparative case study in China, we find a general pattern among cluster characteristics, governance mode and strategic position of innovation platforms. The contributions of our paper are: 1) exploring a distinctive pattern of service innovation, 'innovation through services'; 2) proposing a typology for innovation platforms; 3) enriching the knowledge-based theory of clusters by innovation practices in developing countries. Our results also imply that national and provincial policy for innovation platform should keep flexible because one size does not fit all and must be locally adapted. I'inally, the co-evolution of the industrial cluster and innovation platform within the cluster is a promising direction for future research.