众多区域技术创新的研究案例表明,非正式的制度和联系是区域技术创新成功的重要因素。本文回顾了经济地理学在区域技术创新的非正式制度和联系方面研究的相关理论和研究成果,发现"创新环境"、"非贸易相互依赖"、"地方传言"和"企业衍生"等理论虽然提出并探讨了区域技术创新的非正式制度和联系的属性和特征,却对这种非正式制度和联系的形成原因和影响机制的分析相对较少,对其空间尺度的研究也过度集中于区域尺度。由于当前我国大多数区域内部企业之间的创新联系大部分仍以非正式联系为主,因此对于区域技术创新的非正式制度与联系的形成原因、影响机制及其对创新绩效的影响的进一步研究,将具有非常重要的理论和实践意义。

With the resurgence of new industrial districts like Silicon Valley in the United States, Baden-Württemberg in Germany, "The Third Italy"in Italy, regional technological innovation has been the focus of economic geography for 30 years(since 1980s). The purpose of this paper is to review and summarize the research findings of informal institutions and linkages of regional technological innovation in economic geography during the past 30 years. Based on the literature review of economic geography on the informal institutions and linkages of regional technological innovation, this paper proposes that theories and concepts such as "innovative milieu", "untraded interdependencies", "local buzz" and "spin-offs" have already raised and analyzed the attributes and features of informal institutions and linkages of regional technological innovation. Among them, the concept "innovative milieu" and "untraded interdependencies" mainly refer to informal institutions of regional technological innovation, while "local buzz" and "spin-offs" pay much attention to informal linkages. Moreover, the studies on the scale of informal linkages over-emphasis on the regional scale, and ignore the informal linkages of the national and global scale. Finally, this paper concludes that the research on informal institutions and linkages of regional technological innovation in economic geography is still in an early stage. Given that during the transformation period in our country, most linkages of technological innovation among firms within the region are informal linkages, it is meaningful for further studies on the causes and mechanism of informal institutions and linkages of regional technological innovation, and their effects on the innovation performance of firms.