## 5 Discussion and Conclusions
This can be seen from, for example, Xuzhou which is the third populous city after Shanghai and Suzhou, but quite weak in intensive technological innovation, as are Fuyang and Yancheng. It is the university students that significantly relate to intensive technology outputs and turn out to be the sources of human capital for innovation. Though the number of patents in China has grown exponentially since the pursuit of innovation strategy as observed in this research, benefits from the exponential growth of patent filings are uncertain: few 'original innovations' are produced in advanced areas, and true 'breakthroughs' are disproportionate to the quantity of the applications. The valid rate of patent applications, defined as applications passed through substantive examination, during publication, or obtaining grants by CNIPA to all the applications, has been increasing during the study period, but the rates greatly varied among technological fields, and high-quality patent inventions did not increase in proportion. From 2004 to 2009, the number of invention types even decreased, naturally raising the question on China's technological innovation quality. Intensive leading-edge technologies such as micro-structure, nanotechnology, basic communications, biological materials etc. are very few and great many patents fell into extensive and supportive categories, which are less advanced in innovation. Indeed, as countries are competing to increase the number of their innovative outputs, Iran, Singapore, South Korea, Portugal, and India are also emerging technological powers with fast growth of patent filings [66; 67]. It is worth noting that the quality problems are not unique to China; in India for instance, innovations have been concentrated in few specific industries and the density of researchers are quite low [68], jeopardizing the general improvement of innovative quality. Apart from the quality issue, existing patent filing procedures may also lead to redundant inputs in innovation as the time lag from a decision of whether a patent is issued at all to a claim being made is likely to prevent later applicants gaining patents without any earlier notice, and the time lag typically takes 3 years [69]. Excessive competition under this system is thus also a waste of time and energy. In a nutshell, this research attempts to offer insightful evidence for policy makers to better plan and develop innovative technological clusters and knowledge spinoffs at the city-region level and enrich the understanding towards innovative patterns and critical factors in China and the world. With the findings and discussion, this research argues for incentives encouraging the quality improvement of patents instead of merely focusing on the quantity, and moderately enhancing transparency to avoid redundancy. Conceptualization, L.L. and L.W. ([PERSON]); Methodology, L.L. and X.Z. ; Software, X.Z. ; Formal analysis, L.W. ([PERSON]); Resources, L.L. and X.Z. ; Data curation, L.W. ([PERSON]) and X.Z. ; Writing--original draft, L.L. ; Writing--review & editing, L.L. ; Visualization, L.W. ([PERSON]); Project administration, L.L. ; Funding acquisition, L.L. and L.W. ([PERSON]). All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. This research is sponsored by the Program of Shanghai Technology Research Leader (23 XD1433900). Not applicable. Some of the data presented in this study are obtained from China National Intellectual Property Administration. The authors declare