在传统技术相似度指标基础上，通过对不同地区大类技术领域赋权和地区创新规模赋权来构建创新“内卷式”竞争指标，基于2010—2023年国家知识产权局专利数据，考察技术多样化对创新“内卷式”竞争的影响。研究发现：①技术多样化有利于专利池扩充，从而扩大地区创新可能性边界，进而有效抑制创新“内卷式”竞争。②机理分析结果表明，技术多样化通过相关技术领域的马歇尔连续效应和不相关技术领域的熊彼特断裂效应两条途径作用于创新“内卷式”竞争。③采用技术互补作为工具变量后，区域间技术互补能够有效克服创新“内卷式”竞争。④异质性分析结果表明，技术多样化对东中西部地区创新“内卷式”竞争的抑制强度由强到弱依次为西部、中部、东部；此外，技术多样化对非发明专利占比较高组样本创新“内卷式”竞争的抑制作用更强。“有为政府”对技术多样化抑制创新“内卷式”竞争作用效果具有显著正向调节作用。据此，围绕如何促进地区发展技术多样化提出相关政策建议。

The 2024 Central Economic Work Conference explicitly pointed out the need to comprehensively rectify internal disorderly competition and standardize the behavior of local governments and market entities (enterprises).At present, there exists a certain degree of industrial homogenization and irrational industrial layout among regions in China,which has led to overcapacity spreading from traditional industries (such as coal, steel, and cement) to emerging strategic industries, including photovoltaics, wind power, new materials, and lithium batteries.Against this backdrop, solving the problem of optimizing inter-regional industrial structure allocation has become a core task for China to transform its economic development mode, break free from low-quality competition, and achieve high-quality economic development under the new normal.
With the continuous advancement of scientific and technological revolution and the in-depth development of technological diversification, some traditional industries may gradually decline due to technological obsolescence, while emerging industries will rise driven by technological breakthroughs.However, in the process of investment attraction and industrial planning, if local governments blindly follow similar innovation policy directions (e.g., homogeneous pursuit of high-tech industries) and fail to implement, differentiated development policies based on their own resource endowments and industrial foundations, it will easily trigger the problem of "involutionary" innovation competition—where regions compete for the same market segments with similar technologies, resulting in wasted innovation resources and stagnant industrial upgrading.In contrast, in an environment with high technological diversification, enterprises have more opportunities to access new technological concepts, cross-domain knowledge, and innovative methods (such as integrating digital technology with traditional manufacturing), which can effectively stimulate innovative inspiration and help avoid the trap of homogeneous competition. Therefore, a critical question arises:Can technological diversification suppress involutionary competition？ An explanation is needed in terms of academic theory.
To explore the intrinsic relationship between technological diversification and involutionary competition, this study adopts the analytical framework of Marshallian continuum and Schumpeterian break.It focuses on examining how technological diversification suppresses involutionary competition by three pathways: expanding the possibility boundary of innovation, promoting differentiated industrial development, and improving production efficiency and market competitiveness.Furthermore, the study further examines the pathways through Marshallian continuum in the related technical fields and Schumpeterian break in the unrelated technical fields.On this basis, the study uses the patent data of the China National Intellectual Property Administration from 2010 to 2023 to empirically test the above issues.The results show that, firstly, technological diversification significantly suppresses involutionary competition; secondly, the Marshallian continuum effect in the related technical fields and the Schumpeterian break effect in the unrelated technical fields are two key mechanisms; thirdly, inter regional technological complementarity can effectively overcome involutionary competition; fourthly, inhibitory effect is strongest in the western region, followed by the central and eastern regions.In addition, technological diversification has a stronger inhibitory effect in group with higher proportion of non-invention patents; lastly, there is a significant positive moderating effect of the government's efforts to suppress involutionary competition through technological diversification.
〖HJ*2/7〗This study has three marginal contributions.First, it elucidates the mechanism by which technological diversification suppresses intra-regional innovation competition and the potential impact pathways.Second, aiming at the limitation of traditional technological proximity indices (which mainly measure the similarity of technical fields and ignore the intensity of competition), this study constructs a relatively objective index to measure innovation competition.Finally, by considering the potential heterogeneity of regions, differences in patent-mix composition, and the moderating role of government, the study offers important practical value and theoretical significance.Accordingly, the government should expand open access to big-science facilities, funds cloud labs and cross-region consortia, and use patient capital to ferry firms across the “valley of death”.It should calibrate investment to each region's level: backing emerging niches in lagging areas, widening technology portfolios in middle regions, and channeling abundant resources into basic and breakthrough research in leading cities.Instead of creating subsidy races, the government could systematically support R&D, enforce competition and anti-“involution” laws and eliminate local market barriers to promote industry standards that shift rivalry from price-cutting to value creation.