Innovation Ecosystem with Chinese Characteristics: Experiences and Lessons from Small and Medium-sized Manufacturing Enterprises

After four decades of reform and opening up, the market economy cannot only develop healthily under the socialist system, but also it is more active in capitalist society. This paper compares the development of Chinese enterprises' innovation ability with neighboring countries, selects small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises as a research sample of market economy, and summarizes the ecological road of enterprise innovation between China and neighboring countries, from imitation to innovation. Nowadays, many Chinese products have already competed in the global market in terms of cost, quality, and innovation. China's product innovation performance has been recognized worldwide. The purpose of this paper is to study the unique step of China's innovation, based on China's national conditions, and adhere to the socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics. Some industrial parks have even surpassed Japan and South Korea. This paper collects field survey data from small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises (SMMEs) in Suzhou, China. The study shows that the innovation ecosystem with Chinese characteristics can be roughly divided into three steps, which are slightly different from Japan and South Korea. How to improve the skills and competitiveness of China's SMMEs in three unique steps will help the improvement of the SMMES innovative ecosystem and enhance the competitiveness of enterprises.