The triple helix model of innovation

Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff (2000) present the evolution of innovation systems in terms of academia-state-industry relationships, which has taken three different models. In the etatistic model, the nation state encompasses academia and industry and directs the relations between them. The laissez-faire model consists of separate the three institutional spheres with strong borders dividing them and highly circumscribed relations among the spheres. The Triple Helix model is a knowledge infrastructure of overlapping institutional spheres,each taking the role of the other and with hybrid organizations emerging at the interfaces. These hybrid organization can be university spin-off firms, tri-lateral initiatives for knowledge-based economic development and strategic alliances among firms, government laboratories and academic research groups. The Triple Helix model represents an evolution from linear models of innovation (mode 1), with defined transitions between basic research, applied research and experimental development to nonlinear models of innovation (mode 2).

The integration of academia in innovation systems leads to an expansion of the mission of the university (Etzkowitz, 2003). The first mission of university was preservation and dissemination of knowledge through teaching. The first academic revolution made research a second university mission, and the second revolution added the technology transfer and economic development missions. The second revolution transformed the way that research was organized in academia: from professors assisted by assistants to research groups where professors and assistant professors have large autonomy, assisted by graduate students. The development of research groups leads to individual and collective entrepreneurship within academia, and to increasing collaboration with the state and the industry. The new mission of the university motivates the creation of new organizational units, like enterprise incubators and technology transfer units. University management has to choose between separating or integrating business activities and managing conflicts of interest.

Carayannis and Campbell (2009) introduces a fourth element in the triple helix model, which is the media-based and culture-based public. This fourth elements emphasizes the need that innovation policy should communicate its objectives and rationales to the public to seek for legitimation and justification. This can be achieved through cultural artifacts such as movies, that can arise awareness on utility of innovation among the public for supporting R&D policies and to enroll prospective students in science and engineering.

References

Carayannis, E. G., & Campbell, D. F. J. (2009). “Mode 3” and “Quadruple Helix”: toward a 21st century fractal innovation ecosystem. International Journal of Technology Management, 46(3/4), 201. http://doi.org/10.1504/IJTM.2009.023374

Etzkowitz, H. (2003). Research groups as ‘quasi-firms’: the invention of the entrepreneurial university. Research Policy, 32(1), 109–121. http://doi.org/10.1016/S0048-7333(02)00009-4

Etzkowitz, H., & Leydesdorff, L. (2000). The dynamics of innovation: from National Systems and “Mode 2” to a Triple Helix of university–industry–government relations. Research Policy, 29(2), 109–123. http://doi.org/10.1016/S0048-7333(99)00055-4