Technology in Society 72 (2023) 102194 Available online 31 December 2022 0160-791X/© 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. The role of government-industry-academia partnership in business incubation: Evidence from new R&D institutions in China Junbi Zhou a , Mingyue Wang b, * a National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Address: No.33 Beisihuan Xilu, Zhongguancun, Beijing, 100190, PR China b Institutes of Science and Development, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Address: No.15 Zhongguancun Beiyitiao, Haidian District, Beijing, 100190, PR China A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Government-industry-academia partnership Innovation orchard New R&D institutions Business incubation ABSTRACT 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. Specifcally, 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 in- cubation, 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 offcial 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 signif- icant 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 signifcant impact on business incubation. The research conclusion can provide a policy reference for optimizing the holding mode of new R&D institutions. 1. Introduction Encouraging the incubation of new technology companies is very important for innovative economic growth [1]. Many countries in the world are establishing R&D institutions in the form of government-industry-academia partnership, encouraging the incuba- tion of new companies, and promoting the transformation of scientifc and technological achievements into economic value. The concept of “Innovation orchards” is proposed by Rafael Reif, the former president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) [2]. With the idea of “replacing capital with space”, it provides technology, equipment, capital and cooperation network for start-ups to help them solve the innovation cracks in technological development. As a developing country, in recent years, China has established new R&D institutions with local government funding, universities, national scientifc research institutes, and enterprises. China’s “innovation orchard” has achieved good results in promoting the incubation of science and technology enterprises. New R&D institutions, namely the research and develop- ment entities created by the government, universities, national scientifc research institutions and enterprises to jointly invest funds, talents, sites and other resources, are mainly aimed at research, development, and transformation, and encourage the incubation of science and technology enterprises, which is a new form of industry-university-research part- nership. Government-industry-academiac partnership is promoting new product development [3,4] and enterprise performance [5]. However, it should be pointed out that the government-industry-university-research partnership of new R&D institutions is different from the traditional form of research and development alliance, which is a formal and stable cooperative partnership, characterized by the joint investment of re- sources as the initiator and the establishment of new institutions. Government-industry-academia partnership is the inevitable product of the combination of market economy and knowledge economy, and also an important part of the national innovation system [6]. The typical partnership between government, industry and academia is proposed by * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: zjunbi@126.com, zhoujb@mail.las.ac.cn (J. Zhou), smilemingyue@126.com, wangmingyue@casisd.cn (M. Wang). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Technology in Society journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/techsoc https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2022.102194 Received 4 June 2022; Received in revised form 29 December 2022; Accepted 30 December 2022