Universities as orchestrators of the development of regional innovation ecosystems in emerging economies

Abstract

This paper analyses the role of universities as orchestrators of the development of a regional ecosystem that is conducive to innovation and entrepreneurship. We argue that universities in emerging economies, due to many social challenges, must go beyond their missions of teaching, research, and collaboration with industry for innovation. We present a unique case study of an alliance of three universities in Porto Alegre, Brazil that, in addition to being competitors in the above‐mentioned missions, are orchestrating a network of stakeholders in this region to develop an ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship. We demonstrate that universities perform several orchestration processes that are consistent with the literature, such as fostering knowledge mobility, managing innovation appropriability, and increasing network stability. Furthermore, we found differences in how innovation ecosystems are orchestrated as compared to firm networks. In the case of innovation ecosystems, appropriability reaches the broader region, and the benefits are not limited to participant stakeholders. Such orchestration processes emerge when universities take on leadership positions in the region; they can influence the beginning of collective actions and projects as well as transfer responsibility, delegating power to other actors in the network.

Resource orchestration in innovation ecosystems: a comparative study between innovation ecosystems at different stages of development

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A Bibliometric Network Analysis of Recent Publications on Digital Agriculture to Depict Strategic Themes and Evolution Structure

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Transnational education for regional economic development? Understanding Malaysia's and Singapore's strategic coupling in global higher education

“…In a relational perspective, they have foregrounded university‐enterprise collaboration, in particular with the knowledge‐intensive industries, or university spin‐offs, in particular from STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)‐focused universities and research centres (Benneworth & Charles, 2005). HEIs have further been considered integral core components in geographical conceptualizations, such as building regional innovation systems (Asheim & Gertler, 2005; Asheim et al, 2011; Cooke, 1992), learning regions (Morgan, 1997), creative regions or milieus (Fromhold‐Eisebith, 1995; Malecki, 1987) or regional innovative ecosystems (Thomas et al, 2021). What these concepts have in common is that they aim to understand locations' and regions' increased potential for innovative activity that cannot be explained solely by statistic indicators and goes beyond notions of knowledge and innovation being produced at and spilling over from HEIs.…”