• Journal of the Korean Regional Science Association
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.3-18
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• 2018

These days, regional innovation draws more attention than ever as a growth engine for regional economies, and governments put a variety of efforts to establish Regional Innovation systems(RISs). In this circumstance, this study aims to analyze types of RISs and the combinations of the factors influencing innovation performance as measured by patent application. Most of previous works have depended on case-oriented or variable-oriented strategy to classify types of RISs or to analyze the effects on performance of innovation factors, having some limitations: Variable-oriented approaches fail to capture complex combinatory effects of factors, while case-oriented approaches tend to depend on subjective interpretation. This study made use of the recently proposed fs/QCA(Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis) to overcome the limitations of those strategies. Based on the theory of RIS, three factors for regional innovation-input, infrastructure, and network-are used to classify 16 Korean Provinces. The results show that eight types of regional innovation types are identified, and that most of the regions are classified into either IN-type, equipped with high levels of Input and Network, or F-type, with high levels of infrastructure. In addition, applying seven sub-variables of the three factors to the fussy-set combination factor analysis, we examine a combination of factors influencing patent application. The results show that regions with high levels of R&D expense, valid patent, industry-academia cooperation, IP budget, and TLO values, and low IP capital almost always have a high level of patent application. Therefore, for regional innovation, the public sector needs to provide institutional support for R & D personnel training. It is also important to for both the public and the private sectors to make efforts to stimulate IP financing.