ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the body of research exploring factors that potentially explain the facilitation of innovation in different regions of China, particularly metropolitan locations. It provides fundamental research related to metropolitan innovation studies, followed by development of a research framework grounded in a city-based study of innovation, supported by relevant literature. The Regional Innovation System framework has been an important policy and strategic concept since then, even outperforming the national innovation system approach. The relatively higher volume of former data may indicate active innovation attitude, or a higher level of enthusiastic movement for patents in the region, while the relatively higher volume of the latter cases may indicate innovation quality or capacity. Unit production of innovation output can be used to compare productive innovation among sample regions and to imply procedures of innovation, as efficiency is always the result of process innovation or management-based organizational innovation.
