LAUSR

Abstract Innovation in the knowledge economy is now widely acknowledged as the most important factor accelerating the economic growth at the level of country, region, and city. This paper proposes the TOPSIS-based Order Relation Method (TOPSIS-ORM) to measure and rank the city innovation capability in Liaoning province from 2012 to 2016. For this purpose, an indicator system that includes a set of 12 indicators is first established from the dimensions of innovation input, output, and environment. To determine the indicator weights, the increment and growth rate of each indicator are simultaneously considered in the calculation of the importance of the associated indicator by using dynamic-TOPSIS, and then the ORM is chosen to compute the weighting system. The results show that the innovation capability of most cities in Liaoning province was extremely poor, showing a dramatically downward trend during the studied years. However, Shenyang and Dalian, which have high political hierarchy, achieved a comparatively high innovation performance. Furthermore, cities in southern Liaoning province achieved the highest evaluation values, and the innovation performance of western cities were lagging, which indicates a “hot spot in the South” and “cold spot in the West” characteristic. To illustrate different dimensions, innovation input, output, and environment showed significant fluctuation. By comparing with different indicators, we find the ratio of internet users (C10) to be the primary driving indicator for promoting innovation capability, whereas the ratio of college students (C12) is the common obstacle to improving innovation performance.