Related Variety, Global Connectivity and Institutional Embeddedness: Internet Development in Beijing and Shanghai Compared

Labour Market Externalities and Regional Growth in Sweden: The Importance of Labour Mobility between Skill-Related Industries

“…Other empirical studies (e.g. Boschma and Iammarino, 2009;Quatraro, 2010;Boschma et al, 2012;Zhang, 2013) have confirmed that related variety is a major economic asset for a region.…”

Global innovation networks for Chinese high-tech small and medium enterprises: the supportive role of highly skilled migrants and returnees

“…The reasons why highly skilled individuals move from China to other countries are many, but the main reasons so far have been to access key skills and knowledge from developed economies (Whaba and Zenou, 2012; Docquier and Rapoport, 2012). Some of those migrants are using those skills and knowledge to start their own enterprises when they are back home (Whaba and Zenou, 2012;Zhang, 2013), while others are hired by different companies for key roles in relation to the companies' innovation activities (Zhou and Hsu, 2011). Indeed, when it comes to studies of Chinese returnees particular attention is aimed to understand their impact on innovation (Hunt and Gauthier-Loiselle, 2010).…”

“…In Beijing, international knowledge connections are also facilitated not only by a direct presence of foreign companies in the region, but also by the pool of human resources that from the region move and migrate in foreign countries. The government has pushed forward different incentives and plans such as 'The Thousand Talents Plan' (Jia, 2018) to attract back those resources with international experiences (Zhang, 2013;Breznitz and Murphree, 2011). While different research has demonstrated the key role of returnees and highly skilled migrants 2 for innovation and knowledge spillover -particularly in the high tech sectors such as IT and internet industry (Dai and Liu, 2009;Liu et al, 2010;Filatotchev et al, 2011;Saxenian, 2006;Zhang, 2013) -, there is still a lack of studies investigating the role that can be played by those individuals (beside the role of favouring export activities and market expansions) for sustaining specifically SMEs engagement in international knowledge linkages related to support innovation activities.…”

Regional industrial evolution in China

“…For transitional economies, which are transforming from a command economy to a market‐oriented economy, institutions are critical to allow the role of technological relatedness (He and Pan ). For instance, studying the emerging internet industry in Beijing and Shanghai, Zhang () argued that a region's enduring political institutional embeddedness significantly affects the generation and evolution of their related varieties.…”

“…On the other hand, regional industrial evolution is path creative, and exogenous linkages and institutions have impacts on the regional industrial evolution. External linkages bring not only investments but also new knowledge into regions, creating new paths for regional industrial development (Zhang ). Institutions clearly play crucial roles in the process of regional branching, in which firm diversification, labour mobility and social networking are important mechanisms (Boschma and Frenken ; Boschma and Capone ).…”