Triple Helix indicators as an emergent area of enquiry: a bibliometric perspective

Abstract

This contribution explores how work on Triple Helix (TH) indicators has evolved. Over the past 15 years a body of literature has emerged that brings together a variety of approaches to capture, map or measure the dynamics of TH relationships. We apply bibliographic coupling and co-citation in combination with content analysis to develop a better understanding of this literature. We identify several clusters that can be aggregated to two broad streams of work -one 'neo-evolutionary', the other 'neo-institutional' in nature. We make this observation both for bibliographic coupling and co-citation analyses which we take as indication of an emerging differentiation of the field. Our content analysis underlines this observation about the 'two faces' of the Triple Helix. We conclude this paper with a discussion of future opportunities for research. We see great potential in developing the application side of TH indicators.

Mapping the field: a bibliometric analysis of the literature on university–industry collaborations

“…This database is recognised to cover a broad range of relevant journals and peerreviewed articles of high quality. While we acknowledge the availability of various other databases, we act in accordance with the methodological approach of previous research (see e.g., Meyer et al 2014); in addition, as we focus mainly on investigating patterns of indicators, this restriction can be accepted. We use 'university industry' as the keyword for searching titles, abstracts and/or keywords while allowing for variations of term spelling (e.g., 'university-industry', 'university/industry' etc.).…”

“…In turn, co-citation analysis matches articles in the dataset that are jointly cited by another article. Due to its nature, cocitation analysis is based on cited articles and therefore is suited for examining the development of the literature from its roots, while bibliographic coupling is based on citing articles and hence is more applicable to identify the current state of the literature and the emerging patterns (see e.g., Boyack and Klavans 2010;Meyer et al 2014;Kovács et al 2015).…”

“…In accordance with this research thread, several articles focus on understanding the exploitation possibilities of the cogenerated knowledge to bootstrap the technology of regional innovation systems (Leydesdorff and Deakin 2011). Furthermore, previous research addressed the need to develop new performance indicators to estimate the impact of U-I collaborations on the regional level, also considering the development of the e-government domain (Khan and Park 2013;Meyer et al 2014). …”

“…Up to now, quantitative review approaches in the context of U-I studies are limited, especially when it comes to capturing the field's latest developments (for calls resolving this gap, see e.g., Teixeira and Mota 2012;Meyer et al 2014;Davey et al 2016). This limitation is surprising, as narrative reviews can include sampling, measurement, stochastic, and external validity issues and generally do not allow to quantify the relationships (Schmidt and Hunter 2004).…”

The Importance of Incubation Processes From the Perspective of Incubated and Graduated Companies

“…Innovation and technological progress are the result of a complex set of relationships between actors, producing, distributing and applying knowledge from different fields (Meyer et al, 2014). The interaction between universities and the productive sector is essential for the innovation process, merging knowledge transfer with useful techniques for technological development in industry (Benedetti & Torkomian, 2011).…”