Regional innovation capability from a technology-oriented perspective: An analysis at industry level

Abstract

Regional institutions for technology planning are widely recognized as one of the most important actors that make up the regional innovation systems. They help regional firms successfully execute the innovation systems by enabling them to effectively exploit internal and external knowledge. To facilitate their activities, this study analyzes regional innovation capability from a technology-oriented perspective. We first extract co-classification information from patent data and convert it into transaction data. Second, we generate association relationships between technology classes employing association rule mining and then create comprehensive influential spillovers from the generated rules using analytic network process. Finally, we figure out regional sectors that have a comparative advantage by examining gaps between regional and national innovation capability depicted by comprehensive influential spillovers. We expect that this study will contribute to facilitating the regional institutions to identify region-specific industries that have relative competitive advantages and to develop appropriate support strategies for these industries. Furthermore, this study will be a basis for building a systematic support system that aids regional experts in carrying out R&D planning activities due to its quantitative nature.