Knowledge Structures of City Innovation Systems: Singapore and Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

Cities are naturally the center of attention when innovation and its geography are discussed. This paper seeks to elucidate the knowledge structures of the city innovation systems of Hong Kong and Singapore, and shed light on the performance of knowledge production, networks, and features in accordance with: (1) patent portfolios and fields of technology; (2) the patent landscape; and (3) the correlation map between fields and entities that produce patents. Findings indicate that private firms dominate the patenting landscape for the selected economies. Scientific activities performed by universities and public research institutions are converging with technological knowledge performed by firms. Hong Kong and Singapore sought to attain a co-evolution process for science-based industrial development.

KEYWORDS:

• Knowledge structure
• cluster
• network
• patents
• Asia

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge the financial support provided by the University of Malaya under the Equitable Society Research Cluster (E.S.R.C.) research grant RP022B-15SBS. In addition, we would like to acknowledge the use of the VantagePoint software and Patsnap search engine that were instrumental in developing our studies.

Notes on Contributors

Chan-Yuan Wong is a senior lecturer in the Department of S&T Studies, Faculty of Science at University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur.

Boon-Kwee Ng is a senior lecturer the Department of S&T Studies, Faculty of Science at University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur.

Suzana Ariff binti Azizan is a senior lecturer the Department of S&T Studies, Faculty of Science at University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur.

Maisarah binti Hasbullah is senior lecturer the Department of S&T Studies, Faculty of Science at University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur.

Notes

1 For more explanation, see A.L. Velasco, “City Innovation Systems: The Metro Manila Experience,” in Policy Brief: Toward Innovative, Liveable, and Prosperous Asian Megacities (Manila: DLSU - Angelo King Institute) Volume III, Number 2. <http://www.dlsu.edu.ph/research/centers/aki/_pdf/_publications/velasco.pdf> Accessed November 26, 2016.

2 We contend against assumptions implying that the prosperity of an economy can only be directed by investing in its comparative advantages. These assumptions seem to have overlooked the importance of learning and investing in productive activities in the pre-condition stage of an economy. Productive activities in the pre-condition stage are the factor that leads to diversification of different industries: Wong et al., 2015b.

3 There is no defining productive routine (e.g., pharmaceutical related businesses) that convinces investors about the return of investment within a specific period of time.

4 From an interview session with a senior scholar (August 26, 2015) who teaches at a university in Hong Kong and who invests in and licenses his advanced manufacturing technology to Chinese firms.

5 See Wong, 1999 for more explanation about this strategy.

6 This can be attributed to the production innovations of small firms in consumer goods, and demand for urban transport technology and applications for rail and air traffic.

7 There are two factors the Patsnap software used to map the landscape, i.e., verbal similarity and I.P.C. commonality. Similar patents are visualized close to each other. The hills are designated to many similar patents (many common words are found in a set of patent documents). A semantic analysis of the keywords (from titles/abstract/etc.) is performed to visualize the patenting landscape of an economy. The patent pool is clustered based on classification codes. A patent crossing different areas will be mapped in between different clusters. Refer to Patsnap's help center page at analytics.patsnap.com.

8 Note that an innovation reported in patent documents can be classified in more than one I.P.C. field of technology.

9 The two cities seem to have capitalized on the competencies of their respective national innovation systems in productive activities.