Dr. Margaret Dalziel
Telfer School of Management
University of Ottawa

Biography:
Margaret Dalziel is an associate professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at the Telfer School of Management of the University of Ottawa (Canada). Margaret joined the University of Ottawa in 2001 with 15 years experience in technology development and research management at McGill University, PRECARN (an industrial research consortium), and the Canadian Space Agency. She conducts research on innovation intermediaries, industry architecture, and alliances and acquisitions in technology-intensive industries. Her research has been generously supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and results have been published in academic journals such as Research Policy, the Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, and the British Journal of Management. During 2008-2009 Margaret was a visiting professor at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China. In 2009, she and Brian Barge founded The Evidence Network (www.theevidencenetwork.com), a company that addresses the performance measurement needs of innovation enablers.

Abstract:
Innovation Policy in China

Margaret Dalziel
Telfer School of Management
University of Ottawa


China is taking unprecedented steps to increase investment in R&D, increase the quantity and quality of scientific output, and to facilitate the transformation of scientific discoveries and new technologies into new products and services. This presentation provides an overview of these developments and interprets the Chinese innovation system in the context of its history and current aspirations.

The Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology reports that China is now the sixth largest R&D investor in the world, having spent a total of $37.7 billion on R&D in 2006. In terms of scientific output, Chinese researchers published 5.7% of the papers indexed by the Science Citation Index, making China the fifth largest contributor by this measure of scientific output. With a total of over 50,000 domestic and foreign patents, China is fourth in the world in terms of the number of patents. And China is the second largest producer of nanotechnology publications, after the US.

Like all nations, China is working to transform its investment in R&D into socio-economic benefits. To this end, China has rationalized its government research institutes, reducing the total number from a high of over 8500 in 1986 to less than 4000 today. The first technology business incubator and university-based science park were created in 1988 and there are now 534 technology business incubators and 60 university science parks. Innofund, launched in 1999, has provided an average of $100Kto almost 8,000 firms.