Universities, Innovation, and Territorial Development: A Review of the Evidence

Abstract

Introduction Knowledge-based economies are innovation driven: there is widespread agreement that knowledge, technological innovation, and industrial competitiveness are linked (Oughton et al, 2002). In the context of concerns in countries such as the United Kingdom that economic performance is held back by a lack of innovation, universities as sources and repositories of knowledge have assumed a central role in the delivery of policies designed to drive economic development. In this paper I put forward five propositions for why this is the case. The first is that the innovation process is more efficient if firms use external sources of knowledge to improve their own technological performance. Second, universities are one of these external sources. Third, the academic literature suggests that the innovation process is more effective if it is localised öhence, proximity of firms to universities is critical to the transfer of knowledge between them. Fourth, governments throughout the world have adopted the normative position that universities, their staff, and students should be more entrepreneurial and should contribute directly to economic development through business activities such as the formation of spin-off companies, and the patenting and licensing of technology. The market-failure argument is that, if it can be demonstrated that there is a deficit that can be corrected by encouraging firms which have not traditionally sought external technological resources to do so, then governments should design incentive structures to encourage firms and universities to engage in a dialogue by which commercially useful knowledge and practices may be developed and utilised [the triple-helix model of university^industry^government (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, 1997)]. Now, dialogue at the local level with local government as well as with business is prioritised. This normative governance role in itself is a fifth reason for the strategic importance of universities in local and regional economic agendas. (1) Universities have long been involved with industry [see, for example, Schwerin (2004) on the shipbuilding industry in 18th century Glasgow]. In the USA the landgrant universities were established in the 19th century to teach agriculture, military tactics, and the mechanical arts as well as classical studies (Etzkowitz et al, 2000). It was not until the 1980s, however, that an entrepreneurial role became mainstream policy

The Role of Universities in the Regional Creative Economies of the UK: Hidden Protagonists and the Challenge of Knowledge Transfer

“…Our findings suggest that universities have long interacted with their regional creative economies and, at least until very recently, have continued to expand their engagement. However, rather than the dialectically recursive and reflexive institutional adaptation advanced by the Triple Helix model, what we find is that academic engagement with the creative economy is heavily mediated by three sets of qualifying phenomena: the structural expectations of the higher education system (Benner and Sandström 2000;Lawton Smith 2007), persistent institutional realities (of historic mission, academic organisation and academic culture) and by the norms and values of discipline and academic professional practice (Bullen, Robb et al 2004). The paper principally aims to stimulate further debate by arguing for the need for a better understanding of the complex, sometimes explicit, often implicit, roles that institutions of higher education play in shaping their regional and urban creative economies.…”

Reframing the Role of Knowledge Parks and Science Cities in Knowledge-Based Urban Development

“…We argue that this contingence or emergence regarding creating strong local interactions that can improve external connectivity is missing or at best implicit within KCPs (Amin and Roberts, 2008;Etzkowitz, 2012;Gertner et al, 2011;Håkanson, 2005;Lawton Smith, 2007). KCPs may host knowledge communities which become localised spaces of situated knowledge (cf Loasby, 1998) that are also 'places to be' (following Gertler, 2003) for wider 'knowledge collectivities' (Lindkvist, 2005) to access that situated knowledge.…”

“…Likewise, territorial innovation models (TIMs) conceptualise knowledgebased development as innovative businesses cooperating locally, interacting face-to-face to facilitate transferring tacit knowledge, and drawing on extraterritorial knowledge to generate export sales (Asheim et al, 2007;Crevoisier, 2014). Innovative actors create shared assets that can be understood as 'pools' of knowledge capital (Huggins and Johnston, 2009;Lawton Smith, 2007;Moulaert and Sekia, 2003;Storper, 1995).…”

The Spatio-Relational Nature of Urban Innovation Systems: Universities, Knowledge Intensive Business Service Firms, and Collaborative Networks

“…Consequently, the starting point for this paper is the argument that the development path of a city economy is dependent upon the quality of the urban innovation system it possesses and the knowledge based assets within it. The extant literature places both universities and Knowledge-Intensive Business Service (KIBS) firms in the centre of the knowledge-based development process, regarding them as crucial nodes within urban innovation systems (Muller & Zenker 2001;Lawton Smith 2007;Doloreux & Shearmur 2012;Corrocher & Cusmano 2014;Huggins et al 2008). Yet, less is known about the interactions of KIBS in urban locations with the university sector, and while some scholars have begun to address this area the specifics surrounding the participation of KIBS firms with universities within the same urban innovation systems is still relatively unexplored.…”