The Future Location of Research: A Triple Helix of University-Industry-Government Relations II

Theme paper for a Conference in New York City, January 1998

As the university crosses traditional boundaries in developing new linkages to industry, it must devise formats to make its multiple purposes compatible with each other. The primary role of the university in relation to industry is through its educational activities that prepare graduates for industrial employment. The second academic focus of relations with industry builds upon the development of scientific research capabilities and the transfer to industry of economically relevant knowledge. Thirdly, the production of commercially relevant knowledge, either as an extension of basic research or by solving problems presented by industry, has been institutionalized through the creation of a series of boundary-spanning mechanisms (Etzkowitz, Webster, & Healy, 1997).

Within industry, questions are raised about what should be located within the firm, among firms, or between firms and other types of institutions, such as universities and government laboratories. Given market pressures, is there a role for the corporation in supporting basic research, or is this task best left to academia and government? What is the role of government given the perceived need for research in economic and regional development?

Thus, universities and industry are assuming tasks that were formerly the province of the other in the development of new technologies. We argue that a spiral model of innovation in terms of university-industry-government relations is required to capture the evolution of multiple linkages at different stages of the capitalization of knowledge (Leydesdorff & Etzkowitz 1996; Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff 1997). In a knowledge-based economy, the distribution of research locations provides a focus of strategic opportunities for both research and policy-making.

The Triple Helix Model

Three institutional spheres (public, private, and academic) which formerly operated at arms’ length are increasingly working together, with a spiral pattern of linkages emerging at various stages of the innovation process, to form a “triple helix.” There are four dimensions to the development of the triple helix: the first is internal transformation in each of the helices, such as the development of lateral ties among companies through strategic alliances or changes in the resource base of university systems. The second is the influence of one helix upon another, for example, the role of the U.S. federal government in instituting an indirect industrial policy in the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 or of state governments in formulating policies and programs to encourage universities to establish industrial ties.

The third dimension is the creation of a new overlay of tri-lateral networks and organizations from the interactions among the three helices, established to generate new ideas and formats for high-tech development. This phenomenon is especially salient at the level of regional industrial clusters which formerly lacked a common organizational structure. These new arrangements typically arise under crisis conditions such as those induced by general economic depression or increased international competition. The fourth dimension of the helix model is a recursive effect of these exchanges among institutional spheres, both on the spirals from which they emerged and on the larger society. One such effect is on science itself, as a result of internal changes within academia, strengthened and diffused by government policy (Gibbons et al. 1994).

The incorporation of economic development into the mission of universities and the further integration of the knowledge infrastructure into systems of innovation are shaped differently in various countries. Institutional backgrounds and cultural traditions affect the future location of research. At the global level, however, we are witnessing a Second Academic Revolution: a reconfiguration of institutional boundaries and the introduction of an economic mission into the university system (Etzkowitz 1994).

The First Academic Revolution introduced new roles into academia, transforming professors from teachers of youth, who would not likely remain in academia, into researchers in disciplinary specialties as well (Jencks & Riesman 1968). In some European countries like France and Italy, this revolution began only recently. Research was located in an institute structure apart from the universities, while the latter were largely confined to a teaching mission.

Even in the U.S. the transition through the “Second Academic Revolution” is not complete. As awareness of the significance of research to economic development spreads, schools in less research intensive parts of the country, attempt to restructure themselves into research university, typically by beginning research centres focussing on topics relevant to the local economy. In older schools and at the level of the development of disciplines, we note a shift towards specialties like biotechnology, information sciences, new materials, etc. Corporations are structurally involved in this development of new knowledge (Gibbons et al. 1994; Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff 1997). Institutions like Cooperative Research Centers are nowadays the most rapidly increasing sector in the knowledge infrastructure (Turpin & Garrett-Jones 1997).

Nations, regions, and states are able to compete globally for the economic benefits of these new developments by changing their respective infrastructures (Porter 1990). The Triple Helix provides us with a model for mapping these new arrangements across regions, industrial sectors, disciplines, and technologies (Leydesdorff 1995). Under what conditions does collaboration provide new opportunities for strategic alliances, research centers, spin-off firms, and SMEs? What is the role of market forces, government policies, and technological restructuring? What is the potential of these emerging arrangements as new sources of employment?

Code sharing

Beyond intermediary linkages between different institutional spheres is the issue of emergent structures arising across spheres. As Europe moves toward the U.S. entrepreneurial academic model, some U.S. academics, supported by the NSF and state government science and technology programs, are attempting to create institute-based research structures in order to accomplish longer-term projects and multiple goals beyond the compass of individual research groups. Large facilities like Lincoln at MIT or JPL at Cal Tech were traditionally located apart from the university with their own staff, although there was always some connection in training of graduate students, etc. The new labs, often called Centers, are nowadays organized within the main campus (Betz 1996).

No single line of organizational development can be discerned internationally, except for an increasing tendency for R&D to be located in emergent structures that cross-cut traditional institutional spheres such as corporate, governmental, and academic laboratories. The new arrangements can be conceptualized as “code shares,” by analogy with the airline practice of sharing equipment, personnel, and routes among companies. Thus, an academic research group and a spin- off firm located outside the university may actually be operating in tandem as a coordinated virtual unit, despite their apparent separation. Note that “code sharing” is different from “cost sharing”: the regime of collaboration and differentiation has changed. Knowledge is no longer transferred, but co-developed.

While university-industry relations have been established on the basis of mutual complementarities, this older model assumes that each of the partners will assess the collaboration and negotiation in terms of its own code. For example, a university department has to balance its relations with relevant partners against teaching obligations, high- level publications, and other academic objectives. The industrial partner is interested in the transfer of insights in terms of strategic and operational profits from the perspective of the business, while government is expected to orchestrate, but not to intervene in this collaboration. Thus, each partner assesses the collaborative efforts in terms of its own institutional codification.

The development of the complex network of univeristy- industry-government relations is driven by a dialectic between functional differentiation of communications and institutional integration. As the institutional code itself becomes increasingly differentiated, each partner has to develop mechanisms for integration at the interfaces. University departments have developed specialized agencies for such transfer, but in the meantime the nature of the research enterprise itself has changed. Computer software can no longer be categorized in terms of “pure” and “applied” research (Kaghan and Barnett 1997); “biotechnology” is not a technology, but a science (McKelvey 1996).

Within academia, puzzle solving has nowadays become as important as truth finding. The quality of the communication and the validity of the knowledge claims is warranted by disciplinary control, while the system opens laterally in terms of the agendas that the various specialties are designed to address. Thus, universities take on some business roles: marketing knowledge, taking research into product development, and assisting in the formation of new firms. The recombination of elements from different sources has become a major challenge, leading to new developments.

This recombination can be computer supported, but the emphasis is on human agency for translating among codes into new arrangements (“puzzle solving”). As the new arrangements become codified in niches, they put pressure on the institutional layer to adapt (Freeman & Perez 1988). The institutional layer is functional for conflict resolution and decision making, but it generates its own bureaucratic pressures. A systematic “dis-organization” of institutional boundaries, however, has prevailed during the “post-modern” 1980s (Turpin & Garrett-Jones 1997). If the overall system is complex enough, institutions are able to innovate gradually toward the “knowledge intensive mode” (Gibbons et al. 1994).

In this transition the reflexive dynamics of government at various levels becomes crucial (Van den Belt & Rip 1987). Hierarchically organized institutions like those in the former Soviet Union may suffer catastrophic crises when coping with the uncertainties generated by a regime that flourishes on the basis of knowledgeable reorganizations of previous modes of communication, and at various intermediate levels.

Regime change

In contrast to a biological double helix, a triple helix is by nature unstable. It remains an emerging construct on top of the underlying communications. But as in a nested structure, its global stabilization feeds back onto the underlying communications to solve internal problems of differentiation at the interfaces. This complex system continuously reorganizes itself with reference to its past. Thus, the new regime rests on the bi-lateral and tri-lateral arrangements from which it emerges, and legitimates action in terms of rearranging functions in favour of further developmental possibilities.

These emerging possibilities are by definition not given. The unintended consequences of previous interactions, however, remain initially latent for the actors involved. The economic potentials have to be constructed reflexively, and in this context they are the subject of research options. Expectations can then be specified in the terms of codified, i.e., scientifically controlled, communications. Thus, knowledgeable reconstructions drive the knowledge-based economy in terms of expectations. The institutional basis of this system is itself a laboratory for testing expectations in terms of niches. Institutional adaptations are maintained or not, depending on their viability in the relevant environments.

The niches can be of different sizes: some reconstructions can be tested in a single test tube, while others require complex infrastructures like modern cities or specific regional developments. Tong (1996), for example, has pointed to niche management on China’s eastern coast aiming at picking up momentum from economic developments in the Pacific region. Thus, the size of research and the locus of an experiment may vary dramatically across disciplines, trades, and industries, and according to the specific organization of the interface between innovations and markets in a prevailing system of innovations.

Niches are constructs that build on specific complexities. Surplus value is generated in terms of interaction systems among institutions. The emerging code in the interactions feeds back on the underlying differentiations. Of course, this does not mean that the underlying institutions are abolished. Some may be in need of replacement, but in general the system adds complexity to itself in layers. New arrangements supplement the existing ones, so that the creative researcher is able to shift gears and thereby to draw upon existing code or on code that is shared in another context.

The analysis of knowledge-intensive action is contextual: events are generated in a distributed mode in the interaction among contexts. Accordingly, one can no longer analyze “research” in general; one can distinguish among “laboratory research”, “economic research”, “organizational innovation”, etc. As far as an emerging overlay can be (provisionally) stabilized, it is expected to develop its own sharing of code. In this way, different contexts are being created. Some of them will persist, while others will disintegrate. Competition among them is a dynamic function that includes the analysis of evolutionary life cycles (cf. Freeman & Perez 1988).

The Analysis

In summary, the analysis of the future location of research focusses on the contexts of research in terms of university facilities, industrial needs, and government policies. These contexts, however, cannot be considered as given; they are dynamic functions as well. The future location of research is expected to be found in the interaction among the different contexts. Each context selects according to its own codes; the triple helix builds on the negotiations and interactions in terms of reflexive codes that potentially emerge in the communications among the institutional actors.

The traditional selector, of course, is the market. However, price competition is no longer the only dynamic function at work. Thus, the new economics of science (Dasgupta & David 1994) are relevant for the analysis of the triple helix by focussing on product competition and innovation. Other analyses can inform us about historical contingencies in developments, about competitive advantages in strengths and weaknesses of the research potential of a region, a nation, or a corporation, and about deliberate policies to increase the knowledge-intensity of regions and/or their failure.

Contextual analysis is itself a well-known tradition in sociology. The sociology of science, for example, has distinguished between the level of disciplinary developments and the local context of a laboratory group. Scientific literature, for example, is evaluated at the field level, while local contingencies and informal communication prevail at the group level (Gilbert & Mulkay 1984). Research can be considered as the translation of the mixture of resources at the group and at the field level into new configurations, for example, by the publication of scientific results. Successful interactions are those which change the interacting constellations (Latour 1987).

In this conference, we wish to generalize contextual analysis for studying future locations of research. The observable events can be considered as functional to interactions between contexts, like the “code sharing” among aviation corporations. What is being shared? What is linked in an interaction among which contexts, and why? How are the events selected and provided with meaning from different perspectives, and how are these meanings adjusted in processes of negotiation? Can one specify the asymmetries and confluences in the relations, and can one identify the forces that stimulate integration into specific collaborations? How has research changed the institutional contexts from which it was generated? Are options visible along new dimensions of events that were initially unintended, but which allow us to specify a new dimension, i.e., potentially a new layer, using the evolutionary model?

During the past decade, the evolutionary model has pervaded our thinking about technology developments and its co- evolution with relevant contexts (Nelson 1994). We have become aware that developments can be “locked” into a sub-optimal state (David 1985); that network externalities can reinforce unpredictable developments (Arthur 1989), etc. In our opinion, it is urgent to take the next step: how can one analyze the events that have occurred from a perspective of hindsight, as specific instances of mutual shaping among ranges of events that could have occurred.

The evolutionary perspective requires a shift of focus: we no longer “follow the actors” along the time axis. The contingencies of the positive instances are analyzed in terms of the interacting dynamics among university science, industrial development, and government intervention. These selective contexts have to be specified on theoretical grounds. Then we can ask when the selections have reinforced one another. What can these case studies teach us about policy making and its (lack of) interaction with other social forces?

The central question

This conference focusses on the question of where the locations of research will emerge. The question is obviously relevant for higher education, since teachers wish to qualify students for jobs in the newly emerging configurations. Thus, the theme relates to human resource issues.

In general, human capital is expected to generate variation, since theorizing enables us to understand the translation and recombination among codes. By providing the communications with specific meaning, the codifications can be considered as selections. If the specificity can be stabilized in a niche, the initially latent dimension may gain momentum by repetition. Institutions are expected to adapt in varying degrees (Tong 1996).

Instances of new lines of research enable us to specify the evolutionary selections that have brought about these particular instances. The specification of the relevant codes can provide us with an expectation of future locations of research, since the latter are generated by the interactions among the former. The Conference This conference follows a first meeting in Amsterdam at which the Triple Helix model was discussed with a group of researchers from thirty countries (Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff 1997). Now we propose to extend the model to address policy issues, and to discuss its relationship to the relevant theoretical perspectives of economics, engineering, and science studies. The discussion will also include practitioners and policy analysts from these three spheres. We propose to commission a series of orienting papers as the basis for discussion. These will provide the basis of a volume of proceedings. Additionally, some of the papers submitted will be selected for a more specialized book. The conference itself is composed of plenary sessions, submitted paper sessions, and workshops. Additionally, panels of practitioners will be constituted from organizations like the European Union, state and regional organizations in the U.S., relevant industries, and spin-off companies.

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