Exploring the Mechanisms of I-U-R-C-I: A Case Study Of Local CityOriented Universities in China

Abstract

With current increasingly rapid development of science and technology, technological innovation has gradually become a key factor to promote the country's economic development, and as one of the important ways to enhance the national innovation capacity, the Industry-University-Research collaborative innovation (I-U-R-C-I) has gradually been concerned. Collaborative innovation of enterprises, universities and research institutes has become an important and the only way for the accumulation of knowledge and technological innovation. It is a general consensus for the world to promote the enhancement of the national innovation capability and competitiveness of enterprises through I-U-R-C-I. Since China proposed the Joint Development Project of IndustryUniversity-Research in 1992, the study on the collaborative has developed fruitful results. As an important part of China's higher education, local city-oriented universities account for 95.61% of the total number of Chinese universities. However, the current research on I-U-R-C-I mechanisms in China is mostly based on the perspective of the universities administrated by the Ministry of Education and other Central Agencies (only account for 4.39% of the total number of Chinese universities), which have stronger research strength and more research funding from the government. Referring to the existing research findings, some local city-oriented universities blindly followed the proven collaboration model of universities administrated by the Ministry of Education and other Central Agencies, overlooking their own characteristics, leading to not achieving the expected results from the collaborations. Despite the fast development of I-U-R-C-I in local cityuniversities in China, research is yet to pick up its pace in providing more insights. Although local city-oriented universities have actively participated in collaboration in recent years, they have still encountered many problems, such as low degree of collaboration, insufficient funding, low conversion rate of scientific research results , lack of sound legal framework, imperfect collaboration mechanism and other issues. Based on the perspective of local city-oriented universities, this study will conduct research on the mechanisms of local city-oriented universities participating in I-U-R-C-I, including operating mechanism, cost coordination mechanism, benefit distribution mechanism, government guidance mechanism, and performance evaluation mechanism. In this study, qualitative research method will be used, research data will be collected through questionnaires, case studies, the Delphi method and others. And the collaboration mechanism of I-U-R-C-I in local city-oriented universities will be constructed through game theory and others. The author hopes through this study, the in-depth development of Industry-University-Research collaboration in local city-oriented universities will be promoted to better serve the construction of regional innovation system and local economic and social development.