Abstract
ABSTRACTCross-border regions are faced with the difficulty that resources for knowledge and innovation may be nearby but difficult to connect to because of the border. Universities could play a supportive role in building innovation environments, facilitating cross-border knowledge exchange. In this research we attempt to understand the systemic roles that universities might play by considering the activities in which they build these cross-border institutional arrangements. We focus upon activities of individual actors, conceptualized as ‘institutional entrepreneurs’. We ask the research question: How can universities through their institutional entrepreneurship activities contribute to the institutionalization of cross-border innovation environments that facilitate cross-border resource access for innovating actors? We address it by developing a conceptual framework for how these institutional entrepreneurs may operate, and identify three repertoires of contributions. We then explore how university actors in a specific cross-border region have built linkages that have acquired a degree of permanence.
Highlights
Cross-border regions are often found to underperform other regions in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) growth, availability of jobs and innovation performance (Leick, 2012)
We ask the research question: How can universities through their institutional entrepreneurship activities contribute to the institutionalization of cross-border innovation environments that facilitate cross-border resource access for innovating actors? We address it by developing a conceptual framework for how these institutional entrepreneurs may operate, and identify three repertoires of contributions
We ask the research question: How can universities through their institutional entrepreneurship activities contribute to the institutionalization of cross-border innovation environments that make it easier for innovators to access resources across the border? We address it by developing a conceptual framework proposing how institutional entrepreneurs could contribute to strengthening regional innovation environments, identifying three repertoires through which these contributions may emerge
Summary
Joint-degree public governance across borders The first initiative was a collaboration between the EUREGIO’s two universities around the theme of public governance and European integration. When they both realized that they were each interested in the potential of creating a cross-border mechatronics knowledge-exchange project, they arranged management approval from their respective organizations to invest time in developing a cross-border project Those two advisors began approaching and encouraging universities and other intermediaries to build a partnership to bid for an INTERREG project, which in this case required that universities work with firms to transfer technology. In terms of informal institutions, here represented primarily by networks of people, they were less vulnerable to changing rules and regulations and could be flexibly directed and redirected when circumstances change, contacts needed to evolve from being between individuals to having a degree of recurrence so that if an individual left, a hole would not emerge in the network Both teaching cases involved explicit institution-building through programme accreditation, in which these novel cross-border practices became accepted and mainstream, only creating problems when cross-border needs were not congruent with national accreditation systems.
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