Building extra-regional networks for regional innovation systems: Taiwan's machine tool industry in China

• This paper studies the networking activities in developing an RIS' extra-regional networks.
• Offshore industrial system is one critical evolutionary form of RISs in Taiwan–China context.
• Relational and cultural proximities facilitate transplantation of an RIS' industrial systems.
• This study shows how the development of extra-regional networks influenced the evolution of RISs.

In the current knowledge-based global economy, regional innovation systems (RISs) require to establish external linkages to sustain their vitality. By using the investments of Taiwan's machine tool (MT) industry in China as the case, this paper studies how an RIS developed its extra-regional networks through building offshore industrial systems. We particularly examine the networking activities of Taiwanese MT firms in building their familiar networked-type industrial systems in China, and discuss how the emergence of such offshore industrial systems would influence the technological changes and inter-firm dynamics of Taiwan's MT firms and the MT RIS. In addition to providing empirical study discussing issues related to networking involved in the development of an RIS's extra-regional networks, this paper contributes to the RIS literature by presenting one evolutionary trajectory of RISs which has been of particular significance in the Taiwan–China context.