Industry–University–Research Collaborative Innovation Mechanism in China: A Review

Abstract

The main aim of this study is to analyze articles and trends relating to the industry-university-research (IUR) collaborative innovation mechanism in China; as well as determine key authors and journals focusing on this area; in addition to performing a cluster analysis of related authors and journals; analyze prominent research themes; and also understand the evolution of associated research hotspots. Based on a review of 451 articles linked to research on the IUR collaborative innovation mechanism in China that was obtained from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database, this paper used the COOC software to analyze the co-occurrence of keywords, while the VOSviewer software was used to visualize the results of the ensuing text analysis. The results show that the research is divided into three phases as follows: the start-up phase (which is from 2007–2011), the high-speed development phase (which is from 2012-2014), and the slow development phase (which is from 2015–2022). Moreover, university and innovation-driven research, higher vocational colleges and industry-university-research-use, as well as innovation and IUR collaborative innovation research, and the evolutionary game and government-industry-university-research were the four main research themes that were identified in the CNKI database. Thus, this evolutionary trend divulges three main clues i.e., research theory, research subjects, and research methods.