Abstract:Innovation is the primary driving force for development. In particular, it is an important driving force for social development to promote the construction of innovation capacity based on the county. However, the reality is that the development of innovation capacity in various regions is unbalanced and insufficient. Generally speaking, the innovation capacity construction in western counties lags behind that in eastern and central regions. The progress of innovation capacity in western counties plays a pivotal role in the implementation of the innovation-driven development strategy in the whole country. Guizhou county, as a typical representative of underdeveloped counties in western China, has the characteristics of poor urbanization quality development, relatively backward economic level, etc. It also has the characteristics of typical mountainous areas, and its local karst landform occupies 73.6% of Guizhou, which is very local characteristics. In response to the call of the national innovation-driven development strategy, the Guizhou provincial government has proposed to "adhere to the core position of innovation in the overall modernization construction, take scientific and technological innovation as the strategic support to promote development", and take innovation capacity building as an important driving force to promote the development of Guizhou. However, the spatial and temporal evolution trend of Guizhou county innovation ability, the factors driving innovation ability and how to improve the driving force are still unknown. Therefore, this paper takes 88 counties in Guizhou from 2011 to 2021 as the research object, uses entropy method and analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to build a comprehensive index system to measure innovation ability, and applies the methods of economics and geography to study the spatio-temporal evolution trend of innovation ability in Guizhou counties, the factors driving innovation ability, and how to improve the driving force. The results show that: First, Guizhou's innovation capability presents an upward trend and spatial correlation from 2011 to 2021. Secondly, factors such as economic development, financial development and technological level can significantly drive Guizhou's county innovation ability. Third, there are temporal and spatial differences in the driving force development and progress of county innovation capability in Guizhou. According to the four-quadrant classification, the number of Guizhou counties in the "high-high" quadrant is the largest. This paper takes Guizhou county as the research object, and provides the experience from Guizhou county for improving the innovation ability of western counties, in order to provide the western wisdom from Guizhou county for the development of national county innovation-driven strategy.