Legacy and Reconstruction of Route 128 Governance

Abstract

“Regional innovation systems (RIS)” has recently become a buzzword of discussion and analysis of economic development (Cumbers & MacKinnon 2004). In this literature, it has been hypothesised that the significant economic differences across various forms of networks has something to do with their respective modes of governance. Our study took Route 128 of Massachusetts, as an example, to study the effect the governance structure, rooted within regional innovation systems, had on its regional economy. We applied Jessop's (1998) criteria of classification on Route 128 to assess the lack of validity of the claim by the previous research that what is important are the business minds cultivated from the top quality universities and their network connections. Furthermore, we pay attention to the fact that the diffusion-oriented model, partially supplementing the existing elite model, has provided a theoretical tool in explaining the region's recent economic recovery. Also, organizational cooperation around Route 128, as first emerged through military projects, not only limits themselves to a single industry but to variety of fields, and the strategic coalition occurs among high-tech industries as well. Although we might need more research to verify the relationship between the significant economic difference across various forms of governance and their respective modes of governance, this study shows that heterarchical governance is an important ingredient of a successful RIS.