The study on the institutional governance of the industrial innovation platform

In recent years, the concept of industrial innovation platform has gained considerable attention from policy makers and academic researchers as a promising analytical framework for advancing our understanding of the innovation process in industrial and regional economies. Yet, the utilization of the industrial innovation platform has been on experimental stage, and some key issues remain ambiguous, such as the functional definition, institutional governance etc. The operational effectiveness of the industrial innovation plalform is greatly influenced by the institutional governance. This paper will discuss the functional definition and the framework of the industrial innovation platform. On the basis of this, it presents the governance of industrial innovation platform in virtually-organized way which describes the roles and relationships of the constituents of industrial innovation platform in the process of promoting the industrial innovation. Then the paper illustrates with the case called "Zhejiang public technological service platform of pharmaceuticals innovation ", which is sponsored by several key laboratories from universities and institutes. Also it analyzes the process of the research and development of new medicines, the configuration of the platform, the roles and responsibilities of those sponsors, organizational structure and assesses the results of the industrial innovation platform. The strength and weakness of this governance form, related factors and requirements for adoption of this governance are examined as well. Furthermore, this paper argues that governance of the industrial innovation platform depends on the factors such as interdependence of the technological services offered by the founder members, the difficulties of devising the mechanism on the beneficial distribution among the members, trust and cooperation among members.