Abstract:     With today′s society entering the era of a knowledge economy, innovation has become an essential driving force to promote economic development, and it is closely tied to national prosperity and people′s happiness. Innovation ability is the critical competitive force of a country′s comprehensive national strength, which can control economic development, optimize the economic structure, and promote sustainable development. In China, it can be seen that the creation of new knowledge, technologies, and products has always been encouraged. Subsequently, the research on regional innovation has been paid more attention by researchers. As a significant driving force to promote China′s high-quality economic growth, the regional innovation ecosystem′s coordinated and effective operation also guarantees the modernization of China′s system and capacity for governance. In comparison, regional innovation′s framework and operation are rarely explored from systematic ecology in some research. In essence, regional innovation is an ecological problem. The effective operation of regional innovation depends on the cooperation and mutual benefit among various elements. Collaboration and mutual help among different elements play an essential role in the effective operation of regional innovation, which will cause the shortboard effect of improving regional innovation ability due to the lack and lag of any element. As a result, it will influence the optimal allocation of regional innovation resources due to the neglect of this problem, which quickly causes the dilemma of regional innovation.
    Based on the above analyses, this paper starts from the perspective of the innovation value chain. It systematically constructs a regional innovation ecosystem integration framework which includes four innovation elements: policy innovation environment - original innovation research and development - technology innovation application - technology innovation service. On this basis, the Malmquist index method is used to conduct a dynamic empirical evaluation on the operation efficiency of the regional innovation ecosystem in China from the perspective of input and output during 2014-2018, and the sensitivity analysis of the influencing factors of input dimension is also carried out. The results indicate that: (1) From 2014 to 2018, China′s regional innovation ecosystem′s operation efficiency showed stable growth, with an average annual increase of 9.7%. After 2016, the technical efficiency decreased, mainly due to the impact of scale efficiency changes. (2) The operation efficiency of the innovation ecosystem in eastern China is closer to the optimization frontier, followed by the central and western regions. However, the inter-provincial innovation ecosystem′s efficiency varies greatly, mainly caused by the significant difference in technological change index among provinces. The change index of technological progress in each area shows a closer trend to total factor productivity. (3) The various sensitivity of each province region to different resource input exists. Some problems are the redundancy of innovation input resources or poor management of distribution to another degree. 
    To ensure the steady growth of the operation efficiency of China′s regional innovation ecosystem，the following suggestions are put forward: (1) Recognize the gap of innovation strength with other provinces and strengthen the cooperation between regions. (2) Allocate input resources reasonably, enhance the efficiency of resource allocation. (3) Encourage technological progress, and improve the scientific research management system. 
    In terms of the possible contribution of this thesis, it lies in the following aspects: Firstly, based on the perspective of the innovation value chain, this paper proposes an explanatory framework for analyzing the operational framework of the regional innovation ecosystem, which enriches the components and transmission path of regional innovation ecosystem from the theoretical level. Secondly, the Malmquist index method is used to measure efficiency and analyze China′s regional innovation ecosystem′s heterogeneity from 2014 to 2018. Furthermore, we test the sensitivity of input resources from the perspective of resource allocation, which will improve the collaborative operation efficiency of China′s regional innovation ecosystem and optimize the allocation of regional innovation resources.

Key words: regional innovation ecosystem, operational efficiency, total factor productivity, sensitivity analysis