Abstract
To maintain sustainable economic growth, China has created a national innovation system (NIS) and strengthened the central status of firms. Our data show that the effect of turnover growth in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) on China’s aggregate Gross Domestic Product (GDP)growth is significant, but the status of SMEs in the NIS and related policies is not significant. To determine whether there is a correspondence between the sustainability of innovation in SMEs and the support of China’s NIS, we developed a framework for China’s innovation policy under the NIS framework, taking into account its transition characteristics, to examine the texts of SME innovation policies and reveal the sustainability of SMEs’ innovation. The relevant national government policy texts were collected from the yearbooks of Chinese SMEs between 1999 and 2017 and government notices between 1994 and 2017. On this basis, we also compared with some other countries’ innovation systems. The findings indicate that China’s NIS pays little attention to the sustainability of SMEs’ innovation activities for two reasons. First, the scope of the NIS is very narrowly defined. Second, the top-down, government-oriented Research and Development (R&D) system that focuses on large state-owned firms leaves little room for innovation policies in SMEs.
Highlights
With the globalization of the knowledge economy, national economic growth depends ever more on the efficiency of innovation systems in stimulating the creation, dissemination, and use of knowledge
China’s innovation policy includes organizational structure, financial policies, business innovation support system, human resource policies, and laws, which comprehensively reflect the key elements of the national innovation systems (NIS)
We studied small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) innovation policy texts between 1994 and 2017
Summary
With the globalization of the knowledge economy, national economic growth depends ever more on the efficiency of innovation systems in stimulating the creation, dissemination, and use of knowledge. Few studies focus on the innovation policies aimed at SMEs under the framework of NIS to analyze whether they support the sustainable innovation and development of SMEs. this thesis uses publicly issued SME policy texts between 1994 and 2017 in China as a research sample and analyzes Chinese SME policies under the NIS framework, to describe the sustainability of innovation in SMEs. Different with previous studies, we conclude that the continuous improvements of these policies surely promote the innovation of SMEs since the open and reform in 1978, the NIS is still not effective in supporting SMEs’ sustainable innovation activities and it lacks complete legal system and an independent system to support innovation of SMEs, and the policy tools are not very appropriate and need to be enriched.
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