Innovation contributes to the long-term economic growth. From the perspective of externality by innovation, this paper disentangles the spillover effect based on the regions’ abundance of innovation resource and separately identifies the “leader effect” and “peer effect” of innovation spillover and discusses their economic consequences. Empirical results demonstrate a negative spillover effect from innovation leaders on the economic growth and a positive spillover effect from innovation peers. Robustness checks also support main findings. This study has implication both in the endogenous economic growth theory and industry innovation practice.