SMALL STATES AND SMALL CITIES: USING INTERPERSONAL NETWORKS TO ACCELERATE ECONOMIC

The author wishes to acknowledge the generous financial support of the Munk School of Global Affairs and the Social Science, Humanities and Research Council of Canada. [...] While the Grandes Écoles connect elites in the public sector and several large firms, these ties do not extend to the rest of the private sector, agriculture or labor (Ornston and Vail Forthcoming). [...] Repeated interaction and the trust it endangers, while insufficient to support collaboration in the act of production (Ornston and Schulze-Cleven 2015), can nonetheless permit three forms of collective action that mirror the small states of northwestern Europe. [...] Although the region’s German identity may be overstated, the degree to which elites subscribe to this popular narrative underscores the region’s capacity to engage in myth making, even in the absence of other, more robust forms of collective action.12 A strong sense of collective identity is often perceived to delay change (Grabher 1993) and the Waterloo region was certainly viewed as a conservati. [...] The University of California at San Diego, like the University of Waterloo, emerged as an important agent of change, mobilizing the private sector and public-private networks that would successfully rebrand the region, attracting federal funding and private venture capital from Silicon Valley (Walshok and Shragge 2014).