Innovation system affects the development, diffusion and use of innovation. Innovation environment plays an important role in the operation of the innovation system and it influences the relationship among the innovation subjects, and the performance of the innovation process. Then, this paper reviews the research on the innovation environment at home and abroad. In general, regardless of foreign or domestic scholars, their main concern is focused on the definition, components of the innovation environment, and its impact in innovation ability and innovation performance. Foreign research scholars pay attention to the interaction among innovation subjects, the role of policy environment and industrial clusters. While domestic scholars prefer empirical research on the impact of innovation environment on innovation activities. At present, the main evaluation is based on the direct evaluation of the comprehensive indicator system and the indirect evaluation based on the measurement model analysis. However, there is currently a lack of research on innovation environment evaluation, especially from the perspective of innovation systems. Therefore, based on the perspective of innovation system, this paper studies the national innovation environment evaluation index system.
This paper adapts the methods of literature analysis and theoretical research. On the basis of reviewing the research on innovation environment and innovation system at home and abroad, this study discusses the evaluation index system of innovation environment from the macro level and tries to make the index selection and evaluation system scientific with the basic principles of systematic, rationality and comprehensiveness.
Aiming to understand the development process of innovation system research, this research objects and characteristics of innovation system analysis methods, this paper sorts out the research on innovation systems at home and abroad. In general, the innovation system examines innovation activities from a holistic perspective, which focuses on the analysis of innovation subjects and their interactions and relationships. The innovation system can be abstracted into three parts: subject, mechanism and information. The mechanism of interaction between innovation subjects and the way and method of regulating their actions plays a crucial role in the operation of the entire innovation system. Early foreign scholars conducted an in-depth analysis of the definition of the innovation environment, arguing that the innovation environment is a network relationship, more accurately a systematic institutional arrangement. Domestic scholars have developed on the basis of previous studies, and believe that the innovation environment is the supporting condition for innovation activities and changes with the development of objective factors, with dynamic and static characteristics. Based on a review of the research on innovative environments, this article proposes a definition of the innovation environment: innovation environment is an critical condition for supporting innovation activities, which not only includes the network relationships formed between the various actors, but also includes the institutional environment, infrastructure, policies and regulations, education environment, and international environment and so on. It can be divided into soft environment and hard surroundings.
Based on the theory of innovation system, this paper proposes five dimensions for evaluating the national innovation environment: talent environment, capital environment, market environment, entrepreneurial environment, and competition and cooperation environment. Talent is the most critical factor in the entire innovation activities. The successful development of innovation activities cannot be separated from high-quality talents. The talent environment includes talent training, talent introduction, talent use, and skills training. Funding is an important supporting condition for innovation activities. Without sufficient research funding support, innovation activities are also unsustainable. The financial environment includes fund management, government funding, corporate investment, and fiscal incentives. A good entrepreneurial environment is helpful for the transformation and application of new technologies and the smooth introduction of new products to the market. Entrepreneurial environment includes entrepreneurial difficulty, venture capital, entrepreneurial days, and technology acquisition. The market environment provides more opportunities for innovation activities, especially the intellectual property protection system to encourage more innovative behaviors to occur. Market environment includes laws and regulations, government procurement, intellectual property, and government management. Competition and cooperation are important ways for all entities to innovate, which is conductive to the flow and diffusion of knowledge and technology and improve the overall innovation ability and innovation efficiency. The competition and cooperation environment includes local industry competition, and anti-monopoly policy effects, industry-university-research cooperation, and international R&D cooperation.
The main contributes of this paper in this filed are as follows: First, based on the literature review, this paper proposes the definition of innovation environment and enriches previous research. Second, it builds an innovation environment evaluation index system from five dimensions, which provides a reference for comprehensive and scientific evaluation of the innovation environment. Third, in addition to paying attention to the innovation environment itself, it also follows closely to evaluate the role of the innovation environment in the innovation subjects and the innovation process. In terms of the selection of the indicator system, it designs some indicators to describe the relationship between them, which enriches the existing researches. Unlike previous studies, this paper focuses on the innovation environment itself, trying to open the "black box" of the innovation environment and expounding the status quo and characteristics of each dimension.
There are still some limitations in this research: First, the secondary indicators were chosen do not fully reflect the content and quality of the innovation environment since the choice of indicators is limited by the availability of data. For example, the innovation team plays an important role in current research activities, but it is not well reflected in the talent environment. Second, the correlation and independence between the innovation environment indicators were not tested, mainly through theoretical research and literature analysis. Third, the methods of data processing and indicator evaluation have not been discussed, which is the focus of follow-up research.
