RETROSPECTIONS AND PROSPECTS ON LEARNING REGION

With the development of information technology and in the context of the economy globalization, the knowledge economy has been developed rapidly in the world. In the foreign research practice on the regional development, the concept of learning region has integrated many conceptions such as learning, innovation, productivity, knowledge strategy and knowledge management, and some vital achievements have been acquired. Such research in our country is relatively scare, it is necessary to be focused on. Based on the analysis of the foreign literature on the learning region , the author elucidates the definition and the concept of learning region, and generalizes the relative literature into four schools—economic geography, networking, institution and the education and compared them respectively with each other. Based on the analysis, the author hold it is understood the concept of learning region from the comprehensive and evolutionary view. The author illustrates the connotations of learning region from the developmental view, 1) the basic driving force for regional development is the ability study which is constructed responding to the ever-changing surrounding; 2) the regional competitiveness is derived from the regional knowledge production and innovation. 3) the quality of regional development is affected by the synergistic efficiency; 4) the information infra-structure is the necessary condition for learning regional development. Further, the author compares the learning region paradigm of regional development with the resource-based paradigm in pre-industry age and the proceeding-based paradigm of regional development in industry age. the author holds the learning region is a new paradigm in information age,which namely, emphasizes on the sustainable regional developmental view, regards knowledge and human resources as the main driving force for regional development, and derives the regional competitiveness from the regional innovation. Learning region is characterized with knowledge-intensive industry, the flexible and customer-oriented production mode, infornation technology as well as outward infrastructure.Overthere, the innovative knowledge and integrated knowledge is vital to regional development, the mode of learning is massive, lifetime-long and globalization. What's more, the author prospects the frontier researches on learning region, 1) it is necessary to systematize on the theory of learning region. 2)the research method should be changed from the qualitative method to quantitative methods; 3) it is time to adopt positivism research and case -compared research for the developing countries to construct learning region.