Cross-border regional innovation ecosystems: the role of non-profit organizations in cross-border cooperation at the US-Mexico border

Abstract

In light of the shortcomings concerning Cross-Border Regional Innovation Systems (CBRIS), this analysis seeks to propose a new Cross-Border Regional Innovation Ecosystem (CBRIE) concept better equipped to address the to address contemporary innovation policy development and practical regional policy challenges on the ground. The existing literature on CBRIS has focused on EU regions and awarded only a marginal role to non-profit organizations (NPO) as potential facilitators of cross-border cooperation (CBC). To address this knowledge gap, the role of NPOs in CBC is analyzed within the bi-national San Diego-Tijuana region at the US-Mexico border. The research follows a mixed approach based on semi-structured interviews and social network analysis in order to: i) gauge how organizations are interrelated and ii) identify the key actors within the CBRIE. The results show that the CBRIE concept serves as an effective tool for identifying the organizations involved in cross-border networks and their roles in CBC at the US-Mexico border. Although the US-Mexico border presents stark differences compared to EU border regions, the CBRIE concept can offer a starting point for analyzing and facilitating CBC in Europe.

Cross border regional planning: insights from Cascadia

“…Scott 1999), but captures the multiplicity of actors (and their networks) keen to bolster innovation-led economic development. This is more in line with a timely approach of innovation management: cross-border regional Innovation ecosystem (see Cappellano and Makkonen 2019). The CBRP add emphasis on regional planning that brings together different scales and systems of governance.…”

Resilient cross-border regional innovation systems for sustainability? A systematic review of drivers and constraints

“…In order to analyze and generalize findings across different CBRIS without undermining their inherent complexity and context-specificity, future research should focus on developing both empirical methods for diagnosing R-CBRIS for sustainability and the proposed framework per se. For example, there is certainly room for exploring the confluences between our framework and the ones by Rinkinen and Harmaakorpi (2018) and Cappellano and Makkonen (2019) concerning the uptake of the business and innovation 'ecosystem' concepts in the context of innovation policy more generally.…”

Economic drivers in cross-border regional innovation systems

“…The survey form was tailored to each crossing direction. The roster of organizations surveyed was defined along with entrepreneurs and academics well rooted in the regions, consistently with previous studies (Cappellano & Makkonen, 2019). The sample represents the 74% of the total population of actors identified through the 'snowballing technique'.…”

“…Therefore, the two city councils work closely to manage a broad spectrum of issues as set out in the MoU) signed in 2017. Public authorities, private stakeholders and NGOs are engaged in the cross-border cooperation process through different networks (Cappellano & Makkonen, 2019;Ganster & Collins, 2017), as represented in the Table 2. In Cascadia, the two sides of the border experienced a longstanding competition for trade with Asia and recently as world-class technology hubs. The larger geographical distance between the regional powerhouses, Seattle (Washington) and Vancouver (British Columbia, Canada), impedes tight relationships as in the southern California CBR.…”

“…Based on the 'embeddedness' literature (Granovetter, 1973), the relations among individuals/ organizations, for example, 'social proximity', are considered as a precondition for interactive learning (Lundvall, 1992) increasingly advocated in the innovation economiesas well as for the networks of (local) organizations that play a first-tier role in the cross border cooperation process (Blatter, 2004;Cappellano & Makkonen, 2019;Lundquist & Trippl, 2013). Institutional proximity recalls 'the set of practices, laws, rules and routines that facilitate collective action' (Lazzeretti & Capone, 2016, p. 5857).…”