Research on Spatial Characteristics and Mechanisms of Regional Innovation Capacity in Jiangsu Province, China

The innovation capacity is a significant driven-force for regional economic growth. This article contributes to explore the spatial characteristics and mechanisms of innovation capacity in Jiangsu province. Cluster analysis and spatial autocorrelation analysis are used to examine the spatial characteristics. All data, sourcing from the Year Books of Jiangsu Province and the Chinese Urban Books, are involved in the number of patents for 13 cities from 2007 to 2016 in Jiangsu Province. There are some findings as follows: (1) the article divides 13 cities into 4 levels for the innovation capability, and we find an obvious decreasing trend from the South to the North. (2)The spatial differences of the innovation capacity are characterized by temporal evolution, which generally presents a trend of agglomeration-dispersion-re-agglomeration. Then, the article constructs the evaluation index system of the innovation capacity and factor analysis is conducted to explore the mechanisms. The results show that the important factors influencing the spatial difference in Jiangsu Province are involved in the number of colleges and universities, annual patents, the internal expenditures of large-and medium-sized enterprises, internet users, and the total stock of public libraries.