Author(s):
Paul Benneworth* - UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE
Abstract:
Both the rise of knowledge societies and the emergence of novel interactions between state, academic and industry have been associated with an increasing importance in the role of universities in regional economic development. Universities can certainly seem a source of knowledge capital for their regions, but a key issue in this knowledge economy is the role for less successful places, given that there are increasing returns to scale for knowledge capital.
The implication for these poorer and less successful regions is that knowledge capital investment is discouraged by lower returns and such investment that takes place is itself less productive than in the most successful, core, regions. However, scientific entrepreneurship can spread outwards from universities and similar innovative institutions like a virus, potentially infecting other regional agents and raising their innovative and entrepreneurial potential. A problem with weaker regional innovation systems is their antipathy to innovative activity, and embedding novel activities requires making then sticky within the slippery space of global production networks.
In this paper, therefore, I pose the question whether universities in knowledge poor regions can improve their regional innovation systems, by working in the development of territorial production complexes which stimulate innovation based competitiveness in these places. I focus on one element of university activity, that of university spin off companies to explore the extent to which recent spin off companies, and the activities which coalesce around spin offs, are 'densifying' the regional innovation system, and making a place for those regions in the 'new knowledge economy'.
