Abstract:  Under the situation of new economic globalization, the national innovation system is the backbone of China’s economic development. From the perspective of collaborative innovation, this paper explores the spatial structure of local, inter-regional and extra-regional collaborative innovation and the mechanism of the role of the three on urban economic growth with the help of 2007 and 2017 collaborative invention granted patent data and city data in the Yangtze River Delta region. The results are as follows. (1) Local and inter-regional cooperative innovation has been the main source of cooperative innovation in the Yangtze River Delta region. The inter-regional collaborative innovation network has evolved from a core of Shanghai, Hangzhou and Nanjing to a core of Nanjing, Shanghai, Hangzhou and Suzhou. The extra-regional collaborative innovation network has evolved from a core of Shanghai, Hangzhou, Xi’an and Beijing to a core of Shanghai, Nanjing, Hefei, Suzhou, Beijing, Shenzhen and Foshan. (2) In the early stage of inter-regional innovation network development (2007), inter-regional collaborative innovation intensity and innovation network location contributed to economic growth. In the stage of more intensive inter-regional innovation network (2017), local, inter-regional and extra-regional collaborative innovation intensity and extra-regional innovation network location contributed to urban economic growth, but the role of inter-regional innovation network location was not significant. Thus, the Global Production Network School and Relational Economic Geography School argue mainly because they ignore the influence of the development stage of regional innovation networks. (3) The urban economic growth effects of local, inter-regional and extra-regional collaborative innovation pass the robustness test at the stage of more intensive inter-regional innovation networks. The findings of the study have some reference value for the high-quality integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta region.