Investigating the effect of university enterprise collaboration on individual innovation in underdeveloped regions

The innovation capability index of underdeveloped regions lags far behind that of the eastern coastal areas. This imbalance in innovation capability poses a critical challenge for underdeveloped regions in implementing its innovation-driven development strategy and economic transformation. Individual collaborative innovation ability is an essential skill that allows individuals to transform knowledge and resources into economic value. Presently, research on individual collaborative innovation capability focuses only on the external environment, cooperation mode and benefit allocation. This approach fails to reveal how organizational factors affect individual collaborative innovation capability, and there is a lack of research on underdeveloped regions. Collaborative innovation theory proposes that deep cooperation between industries or institutions through acquiring resources and knowledge can have a positive impact on other environments. Improving individual collaborative innovation capabilities must be achieved through the integration of heterogeneous innovation resources owned by the two core innovation entities, to achieve full integration of innovation elements. Therefore, collaborative innovation theory can effectively address this problem. This article adopts a quantitative research method. A sample of 911 teachers was selected from thirty vocational colleges in Inner Mongolia. The data were analyzed using the Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) model and the proposed relationship was validated. The research findings indicate that cognitive, social and geographical proximity have significant positive effects on collaborative behavior. Collaborative behavior has a significant positive impact on individual collaborative innovation ability. Collaborative behavior plays a mediating role between multidimensional proximity and individual collaborative innovation ability. This study will add information on the collaborative innovation theory, help to understand the formation and impact mechanism of cooperative relationships in school-enterprise cooperation in underdeveloped regions, and thus promote the development of STEM education in underdeveloped areas.

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