Purpose – Being Mexico a Latin-American country located in North America, strengthens the fact of not being considered as part of the group of countries limited to the core Latin-American characteristics, but also without the characteristics of our developed neighbor countries of the North, Canada and USA. This vagueness also characterizes the inequality gap in the 32 states of Mexico, were the northern states present a high index of development and quality life, and the south region is highly marginalized, though with abundant natural resources (i.e., water and land for agriculture) (CCYTET, 2005). In 2004, the Inclusive Commission for Development was established, which main goal is setting the grounds for development in the South-Southeast Region of Mexico. It has been ten years now, were the actions of this Commission are retaken, and the new governor of the state of Tabasco invites the rest of the states to develop a comprehensive development plan for Mexico (CONAGO, 2013). Design/methodology/approach – Given the characteristics of this research, we will use a qualitative approach. Our data collection methods will be interviews and focus groups. Because, this is an exploratory research, the design of the model will be based on the experiences and insights of the main actors involved. We will first identify the states that conform the South-Southeast Region. Secondly, we will establish communication channels with the main higher education institutions of this particular region. Every institution will name a key actor, preferably a local expert in management and planning in higher education, and an action plan will be designed to transform the region into a Knowledge Region (Carrillo F. , 2005). In these meetings, a task-force group will be pointed out to elaborate a local analysis of each state and the capacity-building of the institutions. This analysis will consider the cultural, social, economic, environmental factors, and the key actors that are involved in the design and development of policies that effectively integrate sustainability issues in strategy, processes and growth trajectories for the South-Southeast region of Mexico in order to become a Knowledge Region (ITESM, 2003). The key aspects that the Development Commission established were development and economic growth, regional competitiveness, inclusion and social cohesion, development and environmental sustainability, urban and rural development, and social infrastructure. Originality/value – It has been proved that developing countries have changed their economic status when they orient their actions into knowledge, creating true Knowledge Region, and cities devoted to develop any services or products of the region, and actually becoming world innovation nodes of local expertise of the specific region. In Mexico there is only ten experiences of Knowledge Cities and only one is fully developed; because of the individual characteristics of the places, establishing a region instead of a city will be more beneficial for the states that are embedded in that region, achieving a comprehensive development and better quality life (World Bank, 2012). Practical implications – Every state of the Region has Public Universities that have progressed in their academic development and parallel have worked together by entailment or academic exchanges. Through a committee composed by these higher academic institutions, these universities coordinate the actions to elaborate the comprehensive development plan for the South-Southeast Region of Mexico.
Keywords – South-Southeast Region of Mexico, Region of Knowledge, Higher educational institutions, Planning and Entailment