The impact of knowledge base on technological innovation of emerging industries from the perspective of related variety: A case study of China’s fuel cell industry

Abstract

The location of emerging industries has been hotly debated in the field of economic geography. While the concept of Windows of Locational Opportunity proposes that new industries emerge with relative freedom in space, the literature on Regional Branching has been underlining the importance of existing knowledge base. The concept of related variety provides us with a new way to handle this ongoing debate. By dividing technological knowledge base of a region into related and unrelated knowledge bases, this study empirically examines the impact of knowledge base on technological innovation of emerging industries by utilizing patent data of China’s fuel cell industry from 2000 to 2016. The empirical findings clearly confirm the stable and positive impact of related technological knowledge base on the emergence and development of emerging industries. However, the direction of the impact of unrelated technological knowledge base changes from negative to positive with the maturity of the industry. To an increasing extent, emerging industries tend to be less free in space and prefer to locate in developed regions with related and unrelated knowledge.

External Knowledge Linkages and the Evolution of Comparative Advantage: An Examination of Territorial Knowledge Dynamics in China

“…For example, Neffke first systematically studied the diversity evolution path of regional 'industrial space' by analyzing the characteristics of the Swedish economic evolution from 1969 to 2002, where he found that the evolution process of this industry was significantly affected by path dependence, i.e., that new technologies or industries came from the reorganization of local related technology and industries [19]. Similar evidence can also be found in different countries or regions, such as the United States [20], Europe [21], and China [22][23][24].…”

The innovation effect of low‐carbon technology transfer from the perspective of carbon emission reduction demand: A case study of the Yangtze River Economic Belt in China

“…Previous researches have mostly interpreted this issue from the perspectives of knowledge base, absorptive capacity, technological complexity, technical proximity and so on. For example, relevant research shows that the local knowledge base can help the region occupy the core position in the innovation network, and enable the region to better benefit from technological exchange (Mi et al., 2022). Absorptive capacity is essential for the use of knowledge in the network.…”

“…Special absorptive capacity mainly reflects the absorptive capacity of special technologies. Knowledge base is considered as an important support for absorbing technology (Mi et al., 2022). Therefore, we use “number of patents except low‐carbon technology” to further express the absorptive capacity.…”

Spatio-temporal evolution and influencing factors of scientific and technological innovation level: A multidimensional proximity perspective

“…Broekel and Boschma ( 2011 ) verified that cognitive proximity should be moderate, and too close cognition would hinder innovation performance. Mi et al ( 2021 ) also empirically prove that the importance of related knowledge and unrelated knowledge to innovation can be changed, thus indirectly proving the paradox of cognitive proximity. With the continuous outbreak of COVID-19 across the globe in 2020, more thoughts have been aroused on virtual collaborative research under distanced conditions (Asante et al, 2021 ).…”