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Cross-border
economic
development
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Cross-cutting themes in cross-border economic development
Innovation, in the broad sense, may be broken down into business
innovation and social innovation:
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Business innovation
relates to businesses and focuses on
financing, production processes, products and delivery.
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Social
innovation
responds to different types of social needs
(working conditions, apprenticeships, healthcare, civil society,
etc.) and relates to the functioning of territorial administrations.
Social innovation
is difficult to identify and quantify, which makes
it even more complicated to ascertain good cross-border practices.
Cross-border exchanges of intercultural and interpersonal knowledge
is nonetheless an important way of learning about good practices in
the neighbouring territory and therefore a potential means of innovation
in administration and various areas that come within the competence
of territorial authorities (vocational training, apprenticeship support
programmes, healthcare and social practices, etc.).
Business innovation
is much simpler to identify because it is easier
to quantify its immediate economic results (sales turnover, etc.). At the
cross-border level, this type of innovation may be reflected in the creation
(with or without public assistance) of cross-border innovation systems.
These systems bring together different types of cooperation in the area
of research and development, competitiveness clusters (or groupings of
businesses). Business innovation may stem from fundamental research as
long as the conditions are in place for technology transfer to occur, which
is the only way of transferring knowledge acquired from fundamental
research to innovation via production and marketing.
Research and innovation are therefore the central focus of a large
number of cross-border economic cooperation projects, with two
priorities:
- federate genuine cross-border circuits of knowledge and innovation
- further integrate companies into these circuits.
In other words, high value is placed on cross-border collaboration
between groupings of businesses (“interclustering”) and technology
transfer, with the aim of securing direct economic benefits for the
territories concerned.
The approach consists in identifying the economic sectors or segments
common to both sides of the border and locating the players involved
in these sectors at the strategic and scientific levels (universities,
research centres), support level (chambers of commerce and industry,
development agencies) and operational level (business fabric). The aim
is also to ascertain the players’ cross-border cooperation wishes and
needs in order to implement the operational and exchange tools to jointly
develop innovation in the areas of financing, processes, product and
delivery for businesses (possibly resulting from joint research leading
to technology transfer).