Network-based innovation systems: A capital base for the Monterrey city-region, Mexico
Introduction
It has been advanced that a knowledge-based economy has become an attribute of leading urban centers (i.e., knowledge cities, or in short KCs) and has transformed them into important creators of value for nations, communities and regions (Carrillo, 2004, World Bank Institute, 2008, Yigitcanlar, 2009). Indeed, the new millennium has seen how knowledge content of goods and services are on the rise: we are increasingly buying and selling more and more knowledge. Such changes have given birth to new development paradigms, for example, the knowledge-based development paradigm or in short KBD—it is also referred as knowledge-based urban development (KBUD) further focusing on urban development dynamics (see Yigitcanlar, 2010, Yigitcanlar and Lonnqvist, 2013, Yigitcanlar et al., 2008). This paradigm is the combination of a number of trends and development approaches: such as sustainable development and knowledge management. In addition to changes under the KBD flag, the emergence of complementary paradigms such as relational society (Allen et al., 2008, Castells and Cardoso, 2006, Donati, 2010, Mendoza and Vernis, 2008) is seemingly accelerating their impact and influence on a global scale. Unfortunately relational society only explains part of the complex and radical transformation of global cultures taking place in our cities, regions and nations.
Within these contexts, this paper focuses on notions of interactive learning as a key driver for KBD. It explores the strategic role and close relationship between social learning, knowledge and innovation in city-regional contexts for which social capital models indicate that proximity matters. The paper aims to characterize existing knowledge-based structures within regional innovation system (RIS) models through the lens of a KBD framework. This, in order to identify if learning competences and knowledge-based scaffolding are actually being built in the RIS. In such aim, this paper is set out to explore what we currently know about an emerging RIS in Monterrey, a city at the heart of the Mexico-Texas, US borderland region. Hence, the paper would invite a glimpse on how key individuals and organizations in Monterrey are building their intangible assets, their experience and their knowledge-based relationships their institutions and their future.
This paper first introduces the role of knowledge in city building, so as to give a context for the meaning-creation processes that define value-based taxonomies such as the KC concept. This is followed by a literature review on RIS and notions of interactive learning for innovation, as some identified models advance. The paper also attempts to bring further understanding on how intangible infrastructures contribute to the creation of new knowledge-based urban community paradigms. Then, the paper introduces the KC case for Monterrey, and the kind of RIS developing in the city-region. The closing section aims to highlight a culture shift observed in the way people share their knowledge in a wider, more social sphere, thus creating new forms of social learning and interaction.
Section snippets
Knowledge city: learning, knowledge and innovation
In urban settings specially, the 1990s challenged our societies to become accurate information managers. As data flows escalated and multiplied, individuals, organizations and societies were compelled to make sense of information (and ideally, knowledge) in real time despite of geographical distance (Castells, 2000). Information flows also changed our concept of development. A frantic rush for golden strategies to process knowledge and enable learning accelerated most organizations, and not few
Regional innovation systems
On the other hand, a working definition for innovation is “a process that leads to an outcome” (and this outcome is an object or a way of doing that previously did not exist) (Shearmur, 2012). In parallel, an innovation system can be defined as a “collective of ‘organizations, institutions and people that interact in the production and diffusion of new economically useful knowledge” (Lundvall, 1992, p. 11). These definitions frame a number of key strategies for regional development has been
Methodology of the capital system framework
For the purposes of this paper, two key moments of analysis are presented for Monterrey RIS. (i) First, an interpretation of actual city profiles with specific categories as expressed in a sample CS for Monterrey (Table 2). Although not as apparent, this city CS accounts for a number of knowledge flows that were observed in detail in a previous research work (García, Carrillo, Rivera, Leal, and García, 2009). For the purposes of this paper, a number of characteristics have since been identified
Discussion
Institutional capacity of Monterrey: In recent years, Monterrey has maintained a leading place in competitiveness in Mexico (Instituto Mexicano para la Competitividad, 2012, OECD, 2009). City competitiveness is based on the ability to attract, retain and develop human talent and investment to produce goods and services of high value added to generate gainful employment and quality of life for its habitants. The institutional framework that the state government has established includes policies
Conclusion
This paper has revisited a model of four key drivers of innovation in RIS—knowledge flows, institutions, interactive learning and economic competence. It has purposefully concentrated on the second driver, institutions, for which models in recent literature exhibited a gap in concepts and applications, particularly for the context targeted for observation. In first instance, we were able to see the City of Monterrey (in the Mexico-Texas borderland region) emerging as a type of KC by using a CS
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