1990年代后期以来,经济地理学出现了演化思潮,一些新的概念为分析产业的空间演化提供了有效的理论工具。基于演化经济地理学中的路径依赖理论,以长三角地区的物联网产业为例,探讨了新兴产业兴起和演化过程的地方差异。重点选取无锡、上海、南京和杭州四个城市,采用多案例比较的方法,从产业发展的历史基础、集群状况、政府政策,以及主要动力机制等方面,分析了4个案例的异同点,并突出这些城市在区域经济和制度环境方面的差异。对产业演化机制的讨论还发现,技术基础、政策推动和偶然性事件是新兴技术产业初始发展阶段的主要动因。
The geography of innovation and the regional development have attracted considerable scholarly attention, especially the spatial evolution processes of new technologies,enterprises, and industries. The development of a particular industry varies across locations,and more work is needed to study an emerging industry from a geographical perspective. The evolutionary economic geography provides effective theoretical tools for the analysis of the spatial evolution of industries and contributes to a better cognition of the mechanism for the evolution of economic landscapes. A significant agglomeration has been found in the Internet of things(Io T) industry in the following locations: Yangtze River Delta region, Pearl River Delta region, Beijing- Tianjin- Hebei(Bohai Rim) region, and some developed cities in the central and western regions of China. As the origin of the Io T industry, the Yangtze River Delta region has a full- fledged industry chain. Based on the path dependence theory, this paper explores the local differences of the emergence and evolution of the Io T industry in four cities of the Yangtze River Delta region: Wuxi, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Hangzhou. In Wuxi,occasional opportunity and local government are the significant determinants, while the development of Io T industry in Shanghai is driven by the industrial base and innovative institutional environment. For Nanjing and Hangzhou, the interactions between the fundamental conditions of industry and the state policies are the major impetuses. In conclusion, technological base, government policy, and occasional opportunity are the main drivers in the initial stage of emerging industry in China.