The Dynamics of China’s Collaborative Innovation Network in Agricultural Biotechnology: A Spatial-Topological Perspective

Abstract

This paper explores the dynamics of the collaborative innovation network of China’s agricultural biotechnology, from a spatial-topological perspective. The data pertain to a collection of patent applications jointly filed by universities, research institutes and enterprises on the mainland of China during 1985–2017. Using the logistic model, we first identify the developing phases of China’s agricultural biotechnology. By dismantling the collaborative innovation network into spatial and topological networks, the dynamics are analyzed from these two dimensions at the three levels of nodes, edges and whole network. The results indicate that with the technology developing from the introduction to the growth-to-maturity phase, the collaborative innovation network exhibits dynamics as follows: as the scale expands, collaborations in the network are concentrated core cities, while dispersing to more innovators; enterprises replace universities and become the main innovation forces; the network attributes of small-world, scale-free and core-edge structures are apparent. Multi proximity factors including geographical, cognitive and organizational, play key roles in driving the dynamics, and the main factor evolves from geographical proximity to cognitive as well as organizational proximity.

Collaborative network, technological progress and potato production in China

“…Network clustering coefficient measures the possibility of cooperation between collaborators of the same inventors (Ma 2023). Dense clustering leads to less communication costs, and engrafts trust and reciprocity in a group, enables cluster's members more willing and able to exchange information, which are necessary for successful collaborative innovation (Schilling and Phelps 2007;Galaso and Kovářík 2020).…”

“…Such breakthrough and revolutionary innovations contribute to the collective work emanating from large teams, and reduce the time and cost (Eastwood et al 2017). Collaborative network has been taken as a new organizational model for catalyzing innovation with good potential to improve the production under complex environment (McAdam et al 2016;Cheng et al 2021;Ma 2023).…”

“…Collaborative network recently was identified as one of the important determinants affecting the distribution and transfer of regional innovations (He et al 2009;Wang and Hu 2020;Ma 2023) and consequently influence the local productivity (Lamb et al 2016;de Noni 2018). Agricultural technologies are complex and sophisticated due to various kinds of crops and diversified ecological environment, and innovation activities are increasingly performed in a teamwork model (Wuchty et al 2007).…”

“…The main potato areas in China are mostly located in the northern and southwest areas with lower income level and less developed provinces in the country (Wang et al 2018). These lagging provinces have limited resources to improve innovation capability, and the spatial concentration of innovation activities tends to occur in China's eastern region with higher levels of economic development (Fan et al 2012;Ma 2023).…”

“…Thus, promoting potato collaborative innovation, especially cross-regional cooperation is an important way to facilitate the potato technology development and increase conversion rate of potato patents. While a considerable amount of literature has been published on collaborative innovation network, such as agricultural biotechnology (Zhao et al 2016;Ma 2023) and government-industry-university-research cooperation in agricultural field , few research was conducted on potato patents collaborative network, which deserves in-depth analysis. To our knowledge, this paper is the first one to address the issue.…”