Abstract:  With the intensification of regional economic competition, innovation has become the driving force for countries to maintain sustained economic growth. From the implementation of the intellectual property strategy in 2008, to the innovation-driven development strategy in 2012, and the promulgation of the National Innovation-Driven Development Strategy Outline in 2016, innovation is already in a very important position in China. Under internal and external pressures, the economic competition between provinces in China is becoming increasingly fierce, and technological innovation is an important way to keep long-term sustainable economic growth. Therefore, all provinces are actively increasing innovation investment to promote scientific and technological progress. However, because of differences in resource endowment, policy environment, and economic base, innovation and development in various provinces are not balanced. The cooperative innovation is considered to be an important way to make up for the unbalanced development. Due to the increasing demand for scientific and technological resources of innovation development, in the case that the innovation elements in the region are difficult to meet, cross-regional cooperation can promote the flow and sharing of innovation resources between different regions. Participation in collaborative innovation can let regions take advantage of chances in knowledge exchange and innovation output, and enhance their innovation performance through a combination of diversifying knowledge. This can alleviate the problem of unbalanced innovation development among regions and enhance the ability of regional independent innovation.
In addition, as the importance of knowledge management is growing, intellectual property is increasingly important for innovation. Intellectual property as a result of innovation is an important support for generating income and enhancing competitiveness. For a region, intellectual property can promote technological advancement, promote regional innovation, and contribute to economic growth. At the regional level, there are few literatures focusing on factors influencing regional independent innovation from the perspective of collaborative innovation networks and intellectual property capabilities. However, exploring the mechanism of collaborative networks affecting regional independent innovation through intellectual property capabilities can enrich the theoretical research on regional innovation. Moreover, it has important practical significance for promoting independent innovation in provinces. Therefore, from the perspective of social network, this paper attempts to explore the mediating role of intellectual property ability in the relationship between collaborative networks and regional independent innovation as well as the moderating effect of regional environment (such as openness and institutional factors) in above relationship with the help of social network analysis, principal component analysis and regression analysis.
We have taken the following steps to solve the above problem. First, calculating the network characteristic index values. We screen out the number of collaborative papers between each two regions and then build a collaboration matrix. Based on the cooperation matrix, we apply UCINET software to calculate network characteristic index values of 31 provinces in China. Second, evaluating regional intellectual property ability. According to previous research, this study establishes an evaluation index system of regional intellectual property ability from intellectual property creation, utilization, protection, management and service. And the principal component analysis is used to calculate the intellectual property comprehensive ability of each province with SPSS software. Last but not the least, investigating the path of collaboration network affecting the regional independent innovation through intellectual property ability. We use stepwise regression to test mediating effect of intellectual property ability in the relationship between collaboration network and regional independent innovation. Then we also apply stepwise regression to examine the moderating effect of openness and institutional factor in the relationship between intellectual property ability and regional independent innovation.
The findings show that intellectual property ability and the characteristics of the cooperative network (such as cluster coefficient, structural hole, degree centrality, closeness centrality and betweeness centrality) have positively effect on regional independent innovation, which means that a region with higher intellectual property ability or more important position in cooperation network tends to have a higher degree of independent innovation. In addition, intellectual property ability plays a part mediating role in the relationship of cluster coefficient, structural hole, degree centrality, closeness centrality and betweeness centrality and regional independent innovation. The existing literature has less research on the mediating effect of intellectual property capabilities. No similar conclusions have been drawn, either. However, the conclusion of this paper helps researchers to better understand the mechanisms of how collaboration innovation network influences regional independent innovation through regional intellectual property capabilities.
Moreover, openness plays a cross-moderating effect role in the relationship between intellectual property ability and regional independent innovation. It means that when the intellectual property capacity of a province is weak, low openness is helpful to strengthen regional independent innovation, in contrast, when regional intellectual property capacity is enhanced, increasing openness is conducive to regional independent innovation. The reason for this conclusion may be that when a province’s intellectual property capacity is weak, high openness will not make the imported technology digested and absorbed in time, which is not conducive to regional independent innovation; and when the region has certain intellectual property ability, high openness can make a large influx of advanced technology, and the region has the ability to digest and absorb some of these technologies and turn them into intellectual property rights, thereby promoting regional independent innovation. Furthermore, institutional factor negatively moderates the effect of intellectual property ability on regional independent innovation, which means that higher institutional factor is not conducive to regional independent innovation. The reason may be that there are too many interventions in innovation, but it has a certain inhibitory effect on regional independent innovation. The high institutional factor provided by the government may not achieve the desired promotion effect. Overall, this paper not only clarifies the mechanism of collaborative innovation network and intellectual property ability affecting regional innovation, but also provides the reference of policy-making about promoting the development of the regional independent innovation.

Key words:  regional innovation;collaboration network, intellectual property, structural hole, centrality