Exploring Cross-Organizational Innovation Cooperation in China’s Transport Sector: Insights from Science and Technology Awards

Science and technology innovation is key to implementing China’s “Strong Transportation Nation” strategy. Cross-organizational innovation cooperation fosters high-quality innovation. Based on data from China’s Science and Technology Awards between 2002 and 2020, this study analyzes the innovation cooperation network within China’s transportation sector and its impact pathways on innovation performance. Employing social network analysis, the research analyzes the network architecture, node characteristics, and regional disparities of innovation collaborations, thereby revealing the structural patterns and evolutionary trends of these partnerships in the Chinese transportation sector. Furthermore, the study applies fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to assess the impact of network features on innovation performance. By integrating factors of network structure, node attributes, and the external environment from a configurational perspective, this approach identifies multiple equifinal pathways that lead to high innovation performance. The results indicate that both the network scale and number of relationships have shown continuous growth. The network exhibits small-world properties, meaning that any two entities can be connected through up to three nodes. Enterprises are the prominent leaders in the network, while the involvement of research institutions is weakening. Innovation subjects located at core nodes tend to stabilize, and their control capacity gradually increases. Both intra-regional and inter-regional cooperation have become more complex. High levels of intra-regional cooperation are observed in both economically advanced regions and underdeveloped regions. Inter-regional cooperation centers on Beijing and radiates across the country. The highest cooperation densities are concentrated in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Chengdu-Chongqing, and Pearl River Delta regions. Regions such as Xizang, Qinghai, and Ningxia play a very limited role within the inter-regional innovation cooperation network. Network embeddedness, especially network centrality, has a broader impact on innovation cooperation performance than either node attributes or external context. High innovation cooperation performance is driven by two distinct paths: the individual capability-driven path and the individual-environment alignment path, while low performance stems from limited innovation and economic capacity, together with weak network connectivity.