The role of government-industry-academia partnership in business incubation: Evidence from new R&D institutions in China

it is very important to encourage the incubation of new companies for innovative economic growth. Many countries in the world are encouraging “innovation orchards” in the form of government-industry-academia partnership to facilitate the incubation of new technology enterprises. The research focuses on the impact of this partnership between the government, industry, and academia in establishing new R&D institutions on business incubation. Specifically, the research aims to investigate what is the separate effect of the government, enterprises, universities, and public institutions in the establishment of new R&D institutions on enterprise incubation, and the role of cooperation between government-enterprise-academia in the enterprise incubation of new R&D institutions. In empirical tests using data from the 2020 official survey of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, the results show that for each single cooperator, participation in the establishment of governments, academia has a positive impact on start-ups, while the participation of enterprises has no significant impact. In terms of cooperation, the co-established new R&D institutions are better in business incubation than the single establishment of new R&D institutions. The cooperation between government and academia in the establishment of new R&D institutions has a positive effect on business incubation, and other types of cooperation between government-industry, industry-academia, and government-industry-academia have no significant impact on business incubation. The research conclusion can provide a policy reference for optimizing the holding mode of new R&D institutions.