The founding meeting of the Technology Incubation and Innovation Ecology Branch of the Chinese Society of Technology Economics and the 1st Annual Conference of China Technology Incubation and Innovation Ecology were held in Harbin on December 28, 2018. Professor Wang Zongjun, Dean of our School, was invited to attend and make a report on the conference.
Professor Wang pointed out that the implementation of innovation-driven strategy is the only way for China's economic transformation. The vitality of urban innovation is influenced by the economy, policy, technology, talents, culture, education, opening level and many other factors, among which the concentration of innovative talents is the most representative aspect. However, recent years have seen a shrinking growth of innovative performance and vitality in China's first-tier cities.
The gathering of innovative talents is not only an important symbol of urban innovation vitality, but also the source of impetus for the development of the urban economy, science and technology. By comparing the talent aggregation indexes between the first-tier cities and the new entrants in China, we can find that the attraction of the first-tier cities to talents is not as strong as before, and increasingly more innovative talents are willing to go to the emerging first-tier cities. Professor Wang believes that the rising housing price is the main cause.
Then, on the basis of the analysis of the data between housing price and urban talent indicators, he further indicated that there is an inverted U-shaped curve relationship between housing price and urban innovative talent indexes. On the one hand, as an important measure of economic level, urban housing prices and innovative talents are positively related within a certain range; on the other hand, as the housing price is above a tipping point, a large number of innovative talents will give up their jobs in the city under the pressure of life.
As such, Professor Wang made six suggestions on how to maintain the vitality of urban innovation.
