Abstract: Accelerating the knowledge spillovers from universities to firms to leverage the pivotal role of universities in technological innovation is of great significance for the high-quality development of China's economy. Based on the data from Chinese industrial enterprises from 1998 to 2013 and using the transformation reform of scientific and technological achievements in universities as a quasi natural experiment, this paper conducts an empirical research. The findings show that knowledge spillovers from universities have significantly increased innovation in enterprises within a 10 kilometer radius of them. The mechanism testing reveals that universities mainly influence corporate innovation through two channels: patent technology information disclosure and promoting knowledge sharing among regional enterprises. The heterogeneity analysis shows that when a company has strong innovation capabilities and its neighboring universities are“211 Project”universities or have national technology transfer centers, the promotion effect of university knowledge on the innovation of surrounding companies is stronger. Further expansion analysis reveals that university knowledge only has a significant promoting effect on enterprise innovation in non overlapping technology fields, and this effect is mainly reflected in driving the breakthrough innovation in enterprises, rather than incremental innovation. The above conclusion reveals the crucial role of university knowledge in the innovation process of enterprises, indicating that universities provide key knowledge support for enterprises to expand the boundaries of innovative technology.

Key words: spatial spillovers, knowledge from universities, enterprises innovation