China's Innovation Incentives Policies Targeted at Hub Nodes of the Interconnected Innovation Network:An Inquiry Based on the Combinatorial Knowledge Production Function
Along with the widespread use of digital technologies that interconnect everything intelligently,intercon-nected innovation has become the underlying logic of innovation in the digital economy.Enterprises,heterogeneous knowledge entities and consumers rely on digital technologies to forge connections and accelerate knowledge transfer,which ultimately breaks away from the traditional inter-firm R&D network of the industrial economy and forms the inter-connected innovation network in the digital era.In the industrial economy,the scale,ownership,internal resources and management of enterprises are considered to be important factors influencing their innovation ability;in the digital economy,the position of innovation subjects in the interconnected innovation network determines their innovation perfor-mance.Hub nodes,which gather a huge amount of knowledge,not only generate a large number of innovations but also connect different innovation subjects and facilitate knowledge transfer.Therefore,targeted innovation incentives aimed at hub nodes of the interconnected innovation network are the future direction of innovation governance.We review the evolutionary trend of innovation incentive policies in China,construct a combinatorial knowledge pro-duction function of innovation subjects based on the interconnected innovation network,establish an innovation behavior model in which innovation is based on knowledge search and combination,and empirically demonstrate the effectiveness of targeted innovation incentive policies aimed at hub nodes of the interconnected innovation network in China.Specifi-cally,generalized broad-brush and selective innovation incentives struggle to accurately identify real innovative enter-prises,leading to poor results;thus,it is necessary to seek out real innovative enterprises for targeted innovation incen-tives.In the theoretical model,this paper takes the interconnected innovation network as the basis,based on the essential feature that innovation is a combination of knowledge,portrays the micro-innovation process of innovation subjects through the nonlinear combinatorial knowledge production function,and measures the position of innovation subjects in the network with the Katz-Bonacich centrality.The results show that the agglomeration of massive knowledge in the hub nodes leads to nonlinear incremental emergence of their innovations;innovation incentives are more effective for the hub nodes,for targeting hub nodes can achieve more net policy benefits compared with generalized and selective innovation incentives.This paper further derives the network generation process based on the Bianconi-Barabasi model,and finds that hub nodes play a crucial role in optimizing the overall structure of the interconnected innovation network as well as enhancing the overall innovation performance;digital technologies can help innovation subjects to increase centrality and become hub nodes,and large enterprises,state-owned enterprises,universities and research institutes exhibit greater po-tential to become hub nodes.In the empirical analysis,this paper constructs the interconnected innovation network in China's information and communications technology(ICT)field from 2013 to 2022 based on the behavior of joint patent application between dif-ferent innovation subjects,and tests the conclusions of the theoretical model.We also find that the U.S.current precise strikes on China's hub nodes of the high-tech field such as Huawei and ZTE by means of trade war and entity lists will rapidly crack the interconnected innovation network and seriously threaten the overall security of China's industrial and innovation chains.This paper has the following contributions.(1)It shows the micro-behavioral mechanism of interconnected innova-tion,and finds that the position of innovation subjects in the interconnected innovation network determines their innova-tion performance,which provides theoretical support for the transformation of China's innovation incentives from gener-alized broad-brush incentives in the industrial economy to targeted incentives aimed at hub nodes in the digital economy.(2)In the current context of targeted sanctions imposed by the U.S.on China's innovation hub nodes within the high-tech sector,this paper proposes measures to safeguard the overall security of the innovation and industrial chains and enhance the overall innovation output by protecting and supporting the hub nodes,offering a dialectical countermeasure to the es-calating trade war.(3)It further analyzes how to cultivate innovation hub nodes,provides theoretical guidance for Chi-nese enterprises to rapidly occupy core positions of the global interconnected innovation network,and points out the im-portant role of universities and research institutes as knowledge bridges and platforms in the interconnected innovation network.
Digital EconomyInterconnected InnovationCombinatorial Knowledge Production FunctionHub NodesTargeted Innovation Incentives