Does Industry-University-Research Cooperation Matter? An Analysis of Its Coupling Effect on Regional Innovation and Economic Development

The dislocation between regional innovation and economic development directly influences the economic effect of regional innovation. However, no in-depth researches have been made on how to solve this problem. Using data from Henan Province, China, employing geographical detector technology, this paper focuses on testing whether the industry-university-research cooperation can contribute to coordinating the relation between regional innovation and economic development. It is shown that: 1) the industry-university-research cooperation in Henan Province is increasing gradually, and the network presents a core-edge structure, and the coupling degree between regional innovation and economic development is spatially unbalanced, which is similar to the spatial distribution of the intensity of industry-university-research cooperation; 2) as an important approach to effectively connect scientific researches with market demands, the industry-university-research cooperation can help form an interactive, interconnected, coupled and coordinated virtuous relation between regional innovation and economic development. Compared with the cooperation between organizations of the same type and the separate innovation of organizations, the improvement of the industry-university-research cooperation level can better coordinate the relation between regional innovation and economic development; 3) the cooperative innovation model between enterprises and universities can better promote the coupling between regional innovation and economic development, compared with many industry-university-research cooperation models. For underdeveloped areas lacking local knowledge base, industry-university-research cooperation should be considered as a long-term development strategy, especially using the knowledge sources of external universities and scientific research institutions to enhance innovation capability and achieve economic growth.