Border blocking effects in collaborative firm innovation: exploring the factors related with scientist' willingness to incorporating external knowledge

Border regions are not often associated with innovation and economic prosperity. Nevertheless, the opening up of borders in Europe has presented new opportunities for firms located in these border regions to co-operate and find necessary resources for their innovation process. Despite the reduction of the importance of borders, firms seeking to access those resources need still ‘cross’ the border and address the various effects it brings. This paper therefore asks the question of how the presence of a border affects the processes by which firms attempt to build up productive co-operations for innovation. We stylise inter-firm innovation across borders as building up through four sequential stages cooperation in four stages, and each of these different stages are susceptible to different kinds of border effects. Using a case study of firms co-operating across the Dutch-Flemish border, we empirically explore these border crossing processes in order to shed further light on how border processes play out