Assessing the Potential of Cross-border regional innovation Systems:A case study of the Hong Kong -Shenzhen region

While technological transformations have redrawn the boundaries of regional innovation systems, the effect of such transformations on the development of cross-border regional innovation systems (CBRISs) – defined here as the innovation system spanning neighboring territories belonging to different nation-states – has not been well understood. The Hong Kong-Shenzhen region presents a unique opportunity to study the potential of CBRISs, as Hong Kong and Shenzhen are adjacent to each other though there is a border between them and the two cities have their own political and legal systems under the “one country, two systems” arrangement. In this research, we examine the development of the Hong Kong-Shenzhen region by focusing on cognitive proximity, innovation actors, collaboration, and global connectivity through an analysis of patent and publication data for the 2001–2015 period. Our findings point to a good potential given the growing convergence in scientific research among the two cities, steadily increasing collaboration output, and a complementarity among innovation actors. However, compared with other cross-border regions, the technological linkages between Hong Kong and Shenzhen remain limited.