Development of academic entrepreneurship in a non-mature context: the role of the university as a hub-organisation

This paper focuses on how the evolving roles of a university and its Technology Transfer Office (TTO) are stimulating academic entrepreneurship in a non-mature entrepreneurial ecosystem. A more mature entrepreneurial ecosystem was built gradually by these actors through their progressive creation of innovation intermediaries and coordination among the local players involved in the creation of start-ups. We analyse how the university became a hub organisation. We use the case of the University of Strasbourg to show that the university contributed to the development of the entrepreneurial ecosystem by acting as a boundary spanner and by building and orchestrating the network of the stakeholders in the local system of innovation. This ‘hub’ university became a leading regional organisation at the political level. The TTO played a central role in supporting academic entrepreneurship at the operational level based on its evolution from a revenue maximising model to a model that takes account of social and economic regional development. The progressive adoption of a more selective model of start-up creation requires good coordination among the local actors. Over time, the TTO’s boundary spanning function increased to encompass the development of operational network building and orchestrating functions.     

The research university,entrepreneurship and regional development: Research propositions and current evidence

The objective of this paper is to set a framework for examining the conditions under which a research university becomes more than a latent asset [Power, D., and A. Malmberg. 2008. The contribution of universities to innovation and economic development: In what sense a regional problem? Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 1, no. 2: 233–46.] in regional economies. The framework is comprised of four propositions used to identify drivers of change, evidence of change and evidence of impact. As an exemplar, we examine the University of Oxford's growing engagement in its local region. This paper shows that the convergence between the interests of the university and the local high-tech economy is particularly associated with broader technological trends and with the University's capacity to draw on national funding programmes designed to stimulate ‘third-stream’ activities, including entrepreneurship courses and regional networking activities.     

Knowlege networks for innovation in small Scottish software firms

This paper examines the emergence of small indigenous software companies in Scotland, focusing on the strengths and weaknesses of the region's socio-economic infrastructure as a foundation for innovative new business ventures. Following a brief review of some of the accepted wisdom on high-tech start-ups and regional economic development the paper provides some background information on the Scottish region, comparing new firms in the software industry with the foreign multinationals that dominate the local IT industry. A framework - the ‘sociotechnical constituencies’ approach - is then proposed that allows the author to examine networks of specialist knowledge that underlie new business development. Agglomeration effects and the influence of ‘clusters’ of complementary types of knowledge, expertise and innovative competencies at the regional level are at the heart of the analysis. The framework is applied to a sample of local firms, looking at how ‘learning’ via sociotechnical networks underlies their evolution. Policy-makers' attempts to boost the region's new business birth rate and promote the hoped-for ‘silicon glen’ effect are viewed in the light of the study's findings.     

Local development and embedded large firms

A classification of potential ties between large firms and local economies is proposed, first, by working on various sections of literature concerning multinational enterprises, subsidiaries and regional development. Then, building on a model of a dynamic local economy, i.e. the vital industrial district, a framework is sketched in which different combinations of linkages are put in relation to different pools and degrees of strength of social capital and other local factors. The main object of this paper is to present that framework and illustrate a proposition nested in it. The proposition is that involvement in knowledge exchange and institutional building, identifying ‘developmental embeddedness’, is more probable where and when the local factors are neither ‘too weak’ nor ‘too strong’, and contextual policies fostering the developmental role of large firm units are present.     

Competing Visions of Community: Empowerment and Abandonment in the Governance of Coalfield Regeneration

This article engages with recent debates which assert that community participation and empowerment are place‐contingent. The particular nature of localities has regularly been taken to account for success or failure in processes of participation and regeneration. In contrast, this article exposes the failings based in the nature of the process of regeneration in the complex intersection of national agendas of community participation, regional objectives of economic growth and local aspirations of social cohesion and improved amenities. These agendas meet in the seemingly mutual pursuit of the ‘active community’. They become manifest in the micro‐politics of negotiating and enacting different constructions of community by the different actors ‘empowered’ in the regeneration process: regional development agencies, local government and local civil society. The article is based on ethnographic research in the Kent coalfield. The coalfields as distinct places have commanded a lasting place in the academic and policy literature: romanticized as the epitome of ‘communityness’ but demonized as the site of problem groups. This otherness has outlasted the industry the communities were built on. The analysis here shows that the social organization of regeneration in an arguably ‘different’ place is less driven by local specificities than by a failure to make visible conflicting constructions of community; therefore both the pathologizing of disadvantaged social groups and calls for more ‘community’ in policy delivery rather than policy reform are called into question.     

International entrepreneurship and the small business

The topic of ‘international entrepreneurship’ is becoming increasingly popular with researchers concerned with examining how international and entrepreneurial activities intersect when people in organizations engage in pro-active brokering and risk-taking behaviour in cross-border contexts. Some caution is needed in over-generalizing the meaning and significance of international entrepreneurship – especially in relation to small businesses. Not all entrepreneurial risk-taking, brokering and opportunity-seeking activities lead to internationalization (as the statistics on small business international activities indicate). This might suggest then that the only truly internationally entrepreneurial firms are those that are ‘born global’. However, their entrepreneurial activities are more ‘spatial’, concerned with what can be constructed again in relation to global markets rather than in relation to the local/regional context in which the business is located. For small firms that internationalize a few years after start-up (late starters), processes of international entrepreneurship are different. For ‘later starters’, international entrepreneurship is distinctive in that it is characterized by extending and modifying entrepreneurial understandings and practices that have been socially constructed in relation to the local and regional context in which the small firm is located.     

University capability as a micro-foundation for the Triple Helix model: The case of China

By articulating the notion of university capability by distinguishing resources and capabilities, this paper aims to advance our understanding of the Triple Helix model from a micro-foundational perspective. From an external evaluative viewpoint, we suggest that university capability consists of (1) resource bases, (2) motivation/objectives, (3) resource allocation and coordination mechanisms, and (4) regional outcomes. Based on qualitative data collected from two leading Chinese cities in innovation and regional development, our study empirically elucidates two different approaches to deal with university capability. Our conceptualization of university capability may be a useful analytical tool to better understand the role of ‘university’ and its relationship with the other actors in the Triple Helix model.     

天津民办高校对区域经济的影响

区域经济社会的发展为高校发展提供了基础性条件;高校的发展在提高社会成员素质、促进地方技术进步、推进地方文化发展等方面起着至关重要的作用,是推进区域经济社会发展的基本手段和途径之一。本文主要论述了天津市民办高校对区域经济发展的影响问题。     

Restructuring strategies,firms' size and atypical employment in the local productive system of Thessaloniki,Greece

Drawing upon an extended case study in six industrial sectors in the city of Thessaloniki, Greece this paper highlights that the transformation of the local production system is based on the locally specific interaction of two interrelated restructuring trajectories: a ‘weak’ strategy that is mainly associated to small/medium‐sized labour intensive enterprises and a ‘strong’ strategy which is fairly connected to large, increasingly internationalised firms. Both these strategies are found to be in need of cheap labour while they make use of the locally diversified atypical employment pools, though in different ways. In parallel, they presuppose a subordinated integration into subcontracting production systems that expands towards the regional, the Balkan and the international arena. The paper underlines that restructuring strategies in Thessaloniki, especially the prevailing ‘weak’ one, do not seem to alter the conditions of backwardness for the local productive system. Apart from leaving local structures poor in innovative production, automated machinery and non‐hierarchical networking practices they are largely based on diffused, poorly‐paid atypical employment.     

A knowledge-based typology of university spin-offs in the context of regional economic development

Drawing on the literature pertaining to the role universities play in promoting technology transfer, this paper develops an insightful conceptualization of spin-off processes, and applies it to a current regional case study. The suggested typology of university spin-off/start-up firms is based on several variables, including the type of university sponsorship, university involvement in firm formation, the character of knowledge applied, and co-localization of the founders. The empirical case study is used to demonstrate the usefulness of this approach in analyzing spin-off firms, and their dynamics. The study is based on interviews conducted with university spin-offs/start-ups in the information technology (IT) sector located in the Kitchener and Guelph metropolitan areas. This region, which is home to the University of Waterloo – one of Canada’s premier science and technology universities – has experienced an impetus of spin-off processes originating from university research dating back to the 1970s.The results of our analysis expose several trends: Sponsored spin-offs are largely the result of particular university research projects, and apply specific knowledge inputs in the development of their initial core technology. Unsponsored spin-offs, which find their foundation in decentralized idea development outside of the university setting, almost entirely rely on generic broad knowledge bases for the development of innovative products and services, which have enabled the firm-formation process. Overall, it is surprising that even firms that have received some form of university support described the role the University of Waterloo had in their start-up process as marginal. The dynamic research approach applied in this study, which outlines the university’s changing role over time and the regional dynamics associated with spin-off firms, further demonstrates the potential of our typology. As such, our typology of university-related start-up/spin-off firms is designed to support studies concerned with the wider impact of universities on technology transfer and regional development.     

UNIVERSITY RESEARCH, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS AND EUROPEAN INNOVATION SYSTEMS

Abstract This paper surveys the literature on university patenting. From the point of view of the economic theory of patents, it is argued that patenting knowledge developed by university researchers is paradoxical: patents are normally intended to stimulate knowledge development by providing property rights, but universities operate also under a different incentive scheme, i.e. they receive public funds to perform socially useful knowledge. In the debate surrounding the so‐called Bayh‐Dole Act in the USA, it has, however, been argued that patents on university inventions may be necessary to stimulate technology transfer from universities to private firms. The first part of the paper addresses two major questions. First, what is the economic logic of Bayh‐Dole, and, second, what were the effects on universities and the knowledge they develop? In the second part, the paper addresses the issue of whether ‘Bayh‐Dole‐like’ legislation would be beneficial for European countries. In a number of European countries, a suggestion has been made that this could enhance knowledge transfer from the public to the private sector. Using a new database resulting from a survey among patent inventors in six European countries, an assessment is given of the degree of university patenting in Europe. Because university researchers are often involved in patented inventions without the university being listed as a patent applicant, statistics based on the patent office databases alone often underestimate university patenting in Europe. The paper ends with a discussion of how this ‘European practice’ of university patenting affects public–private knowledge transfer in Europe, and how this compares to the effects of the Bayh‐Dole Act in the USA.     

A Smooth Ride? From Industrial to Creative Urbanism in Oshawa,Ontario

In mainstream media, policy circles and academic scholarship, economic discourses have highlighted the importance of knowledge, creativity and innovation for generating economic growth. This has been translated into an urban planning and policy agenda which favours the establishment of research parks, innovation clusters, and especially universities along with amenities to attract creative‐class workers. In much of this literature universities are invested with an almost magical power to spur economic growth, and the benign language of ‘transition’ is used suggesting a rather seamless progression from one urban economic engine to another. Through analysis of policy documents and key informant interviews related to the establishment of a new university in Oshawa, Ontario, this case study seeks to challenge the straightforward relationship that is assumed to exist between universities and local economic development. Like other lagging regions across the OECD attempting to repair their economies through creative and knowledge urbanism, Oshawa's recent achievements are tempered by growing concerns about poverty, homelessness and inequality. Planners and policymakers that mistake the complexities of economic restructuring for a smooth ‘urban transition’ put their cities and citizens at risk of creating new problems out of efforts to improve local conditions.     

Welcoming Refugees and the Cultural Wealth of Cities: Intersections of Urban Development and Refugee Humanitarianism

In a context of rising nativism, cities across liberal democracies are enacting agendas to ‘welcome’ migrants and refugees. Existing scholarship examines this contentious political geography as reflecting either accommodative or restrictive responses to local immigrant populations. Through this lens, pro‐immigrant policies and dynamics are seen to recognize and support a set of pre‐defined immigrant ‘interests’, with the pertinent question being which local actors initiate processes of incorporation and why. Drawing on urban scholarship, this article offers an alternative framework through an analysis of resettled refugees’ experiences within the ‘welcoming agenda’ of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I show that this agenda is tethered to postindustrial ideologies of urban development, which see building and promoting ‘diversity’ as an economic exigency. As such, locally resettled refugees are incentivized to participate in a ‘symbolic economy’ valuing images of diversity, cosmopolitanism and immigrant contribution. Refugees gain access to resources, recognition and decision makers through participation in this symbolic economy, a process constituting a previously unexamined form of incorporation. I advance the concept of the ‘welcomed refugee’ to organize thinking about this process and call for critical attention to the forms of incorporation fostered in pro‐immigrant, cosmopolitan, substate settings.     

The effect of university and regional knowledge spillovers on firms’ performance: an analysis of the Spanish USOs

Previous empirical studies of university spin-off (USO) growth have applied a firm-based approach without modelling how contextual factors may influence firm growth. By adopting an ‘interactionist approach’, this paper tests the hypothesis that the regional and university contexts may partly determine USO growth, together with firms’ internal resources. Using a sample of 531 Spanish USOs located in 16 Spanish regions and launched by 51 universities over the 2001–2013 and applying multilevel modelling with macro- and micro-data, the findings confirmed that regional context, together with firm-specific characteristics, are important for explaining USO growth. More specifically, the presence of venture capitalists, the capacity to generate internal funds, and operating in high-tech industries have a positive effect on USO growth. On the basis of the results, we propose some policies for fostering USO growth.     

A resilient social economy? Insights from the community food sector in the UK

At a time of global economic and environmental crisis, academic and policy debates are re-emphasizing the potential of the social economy in providing an alternative development model that reconnects communities with their resource-base and enhances their ‘resilience’. The goal of this paper is to explore this potential through a focus on the practices and values of those who are concretely involved in the social economy. Based on data collected on five community food enterprises in Oxfordshire, UK, the analysis focuses on the perceptions of social entrepreneurs in relation to the ‘alternativeness’ of the social economy, its potential for expansion and its resilience. The research highlights the capacity of social entrepreneurs to empower local communities through a process of collective mobilization of local resources. Theoretically, this study generates new insights into the nature and meanings of resilience as a process of creation of more self-reliant communities of people, places, tools, skills and knowledge. From a policy and practice perspective, the paper raises the need for regional development strategies that capture the gains of these isolated initiatives, particularly in relation to their innovative capacity to create a shared vision that fosters synergies between local ecological, social and economic resources.     

Never Give up on the Good Times: Student Attrition in the UK*

The determinants of students’ propensity to drop out of university are analysed using individual records of all students passing through the central applications process in 1993. The data set comprises about 100,000 individuals and allows a much more thorough analysis of student wastage than has been possible in the past. The main reasons for attrition, academic failure (‘involuntary’ attrition) and ‘voluntary’ dropout, are modelled. The results highlight, inter alia, the importance of matching and peer group effects, both of which have been found to be important determinants of student outcomes in the US but which have been subject to little empirical scrutiny for the UK.     

Tourism from Above and Below: Globalization,Localization and New Orleans's Mardi Gras

Scholars currently debate whether tourism is a force of standardization that eradicates local cultures and traditions or whether tourism is a force of heterogeneity that enhances place distinctiveness. This article uses a case study of the Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans to explain the connections between global forces and local actions in the development of urban tourism. I argue that the globalization and localization of Mardi Gras are occurring simultaneously with the result being a mix of homogenizing and particularizing influences in New Orleans. I develop this argument by distinguishing between ‘tourism from above’ and ‘tourism from below’, a distinction that helps to explain how tourism can help undermine as well as promote local differences. ‘Tourism from above’ refers to the global level forces of commodification, standardization and rationalization that affect all cities. ‘Tourism from below’ refers to the ways in which local groups and individuals resist the homogenizing effects of globalized tourism and use tourism to anchor Mardi Gras in place and create new carnival traditions. Analysis of global‐local connections in tourism provides an important opportunity for theoretical development and offers a unique perspective for understanding tourism as a process of globalization and localization. Les intellectuels s’interrogent actuellement sur le fait que le tourisme soit ou non une force de normalisation capable d’éliminer cultures et traditions locales, ou une force d’hétérogénéité qui renforce le caractère distinctif des lieux. Utilisant une étude de cas sur la célébration de Mardi gras à la Nouvelle‐Orléans, l’article explique les relations entre forces mondiales et actions locales dans le développement du tourisme urbain: mondialisation et localisation de cette fête se produisent simultanément, se traduisant dans la ville par une combinaison d’influences homogénéisantes et singularisantes. La démonstration établit ensuite une distinction entre ‘tourisme par le haut’ et ‘tourisme par le bas’ qui permet d’éclaircir comment l’activité peut contribuer tant à atténuer qu’à favoriser les différences locales. Le ‘tourisme par le haut’ s’applique aux forces mondiales de banalisation, normalisation et rationalisation qui touchent toutes les grandes villes. Le ‘tourisme par le bas’ portent sur les moyens qu’appliquent groupes et individus locaux dans le but de résister aux effets homogénéisateurs du tourisme mondialisé et de se servir de cette activité pour ancrer Mardi gras dans le lieu et créer de nouvelles traditions carnavalesques. L’analyse des relations entre les plans mondial et local dans le domaine du tourisme offre une possibilité intéressante de théorisation et une perspective unique d’appréhension du tourisme comme processus de mondialisation et localisation.     

关于建设省级区域开放大学的思考

依托省级电大建设区域开放大学对构建中国开放大学体系、促进区域经济社会发展、整合与共享地方教育资源等具有深远意义;面临的问题和挑战有因思想观念因素的束缚而对开放大学的认识不足,因制度供给不足使开放大学建设的保障机制不健全,电大现行系统办学模式和体制及存在的其他因素的制约;提出要进一步营造有利于开放大学发展的社会氛围,加大投入依托省级电大整合省级区域成人教育资源,加强质量保障体系和监控体系建设,亮化自身优势彰显省级区域开放大学特色等建议。     

Unintended Consequences: Does Aid Promote Arms Races?*

Using global data for the period 1960–99, we model military expenditure. Neighbours’ military spending and development aid are important determinants of military expenditure. An implication of the model is that there are regional arms races which are fuelled by aid. Potentially, aid is encouraging a ‘regional public bad’. There may, however, be an offsetting public good effect if military spending deters rebellions. In a simultaneous equation model, we find no deterrence effect of spending on the risk of civil war. Hence, there appears to be no regional public good effect offsetting the public bad arising from a neighbourhood arms race.     

大学科技园对区域经济发展的影响——以南昌大学国家大学科技园为例

大学科技园发展至今,已经成为促进区域经济发展的重要力量。本文从理论上对大学科技园的区域经济发展效应作出判断,提出大学科技园是区域经济发展的强大动力。为此,通过以南昌大学科技园为例,分别从品牌建设、技术交易与承办科技活动等方面阐述了大学科技园对区域经济品牌、服务和信息方面的作用。为了进一步完善和推广南昌大学科技园区的做法,提出了相应的政策启示:明确大学科技园服务区域经济发展大局的战略定位;持续坚持经济发展规律,创新服务功能与方式;利用科技入园组建创新联盟,提升区域科技创新能力;突破科技园发展瓶颈,为区域经济提供可持续服务。