Aligning regional and business strategies: Looking inside the Basque Country entrepreneurial innovation ecosystem

• Published date: 01 September 2020
• Author: Maribel Guerrero,Mariangélica Martínez‐Chávez
• Date: 01 September 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/tie.22162

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Aligning regional and business strategies: Looking inside the

Basque Country entrepreneurial innovation ecosystem

Maribel Guerrero

1,2

| Mariangélica Martínez-Chávez

3

1

Facultad de Economía y Negocios,

Universidad del Desarrollo, Santiago de Chile,

Chile

2

Northumbria Centre for Innovation Regional

Transformation and Entrepreneurship

(iNCITE), Newcastle Business School, Business

and Law School, Northumbria University,

Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

3

Mondragon University, Business Faculty &

MIK, Advanced Strategies, Arrasate, Spain

Correspondence

Maribel Guerrero, Facultad de Economía y

Negocios, Universidad del Desarrollo, Santiago

de Chile, Chile.

Email: maribel.guerrero@northumbria.ac.uk

Abstract

The current socio-economic scenarios have generated several challenges for any

organization. Regional authorities have designed policies that combine supply–

demand needs and innovative entrepreneurship programs. The alignment between

regional and business strategies has become critical to ensure the necessary

resources, skills and capabilities in the region. This article analyses the alignment of

regional strategies (entrepreneurial innovation ecosystems) and business strategies

(development of new entrepreneurial innovations). By adopting mixed theoretical

approaches, we proposed a conceptual model to understand the role of institutional

strategies on the definition of business strategies. Given the nature of this study, our

methodological design combines a case study approach and an action research

approach. Our results provide insights into the positive outcomes generated when

regional strategies and business strategies are aligned.

KEYWORDS

Basque Country, corporate entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial innovation ecosystems,

institutional economics, open innovation

1|INTRODUCTION

The current social and economic scenarios have generated several

challenges for any organization located across the globe. Sever al

authors have recognized that we currently were embroiled in

uncertain times (Soros, 2008; Stiglitz, 2010). In Europe, a good

example is the allocation of public resources on mechanisms for

stabilizing the economy, kick-starting growth, and tackling sys-

temic risks. This allocation strategy holds particular significance

when the business density in European countries is integrated by

small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that contribute 66.5%

of employment and 57.8% of the gross added value generated by

the private sector (Foray et al., 2012). In this vein, it is essential to

acknowledge the critical role played by SMEs on entrepreneurship,

innovation, employment and economic growth. Therefore, the

entry, the exit and survival rates are strongly related to the quality

of environmental conditions (Porter, 1980; Urbano, Guerrero,

Ferreira, & Fernandes, 2019).

Both policymakers and academics have paid attention to the

ecosystem conditions that encourage entrepreneurial innovations

and high-potential entrepreneurship (Guerrero & Urbano, 2019). In

the European contex t, policymakers have encoura ged the smart spe-

cialization on sec tors/technologi es as a strategy to be competitive

and entrepreneur ial (Foray et al., 2 012; Mccan & Ortega -Argilés,

2015), and configure entrepreneurial innovation ecosystems (Autio

et al., 2014; Acs, Estrin, Mickiewicz, & Szerb, 2017). In this vein, sev-

eral academics have provided insights about how authorities design

policies by combining mechanisms that support supply–demand

needs and by configuring the most favorable conditions to boost

innovative entrepreneurship (Autio et al., 2014; Foray et al., 2012;

DOI: 10.1002/tie.22162

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reprodu ction in any medium,

provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2020 The Authors. Thunderbird International Business Review published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.

Thunderbird Int. Bus. Rev.. 2020;62:607–621. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/tie 607