Suchergebnisse

The development of a new research system in Japan throughout the 1990s is seemingly leading to the emergence of new relationships and systems of innovation, in which new university-industry links have been sought as a means to stimulate regional economic growth. This article examines the changing roles of universities against the current policy and institutional landscapes in Japan, given the recent university reforms, the concentration of resources to 'elite' institutions, and the 'regionalisation' of science and innovation policies. The variety of forms of university-industry linkages and spatial relationships that universities are developing are illustrated, and organisational challenges in order to connect excellence and relevance at the institutional level are identified

Universities in the UK have experienced dramatic changes since the onset of the global financial crisis, partly due to the immediate effects of the crisis, but also to the change in national government, upheavals in higher education policy and austerity measures. Increased pressure for local engagement with business has been combined with a rescaling of local economic development governance, and a shift from regional collaboration to a more localist agenda. This paper examines the implications of these changes on university institutional strategies and patterns of collaboration in two city regions: Newcastle and Greater Manchester.

The concept of 'entrepreneurial ecosystems' has emerged as a means for theorizing and making policy-decisions concerning entrepreneurship and economic development within and across cities and regions. This book assembles original contributions from scholars across the world to provide an in-depth analysis of a concept that has the capability to capture a dynamic global economy with entrepreneurial innovation at the crux of its future development. It addresses wider issues concerning the evolution of new forms of industrial organisation.

There has been a massive expansion of higher education in recent decades as part of attempts to create workforces with the skills to be able to compete successfully in the context of the knowledge based economy. This emerging context demands new kinds of skills and approaches from workers to feed into industries that are evolving rapidly. Economic strength in the knowledge-based economy is driven by innovation, taking existing resources and assets and using them to do new things better and increase overall welfare levels. Whilst innovation is necessary across government, business, and civil society, universities are at the heart of attempts to improve the overall knowledge capital endowments that provide the feedstock for innovation as well as a proving ground for future innovators. At the same time, there is widespread unrest that universities are failing to respond to these new demands and are continuing to act as 'ivory towers' outside of rather than driving forward society (Galan-Muros, 2016). Particular concern lies on perceptions that universities have tended to expand their existing activities rather than to create new courses, pedagogies, and learning environments that best meet these needs. Where universities contribute effectively to innovation, then they can create whole new industries and sectors, and transform the fortunes of particular places. But at the moment, these conflicting narratives make it hard for policy-makers to determine whether universities (and indeed, which kinds of universities) are a boost to or a drag upon innovation capacities. A key challenge for European policy-makers is therefore distinguishing the extent to which universities are realising their potential to contribute to the emergence of the knowledge-based economy. By distinguishing which institutions are and are not realising this potential, policy-makers can developed a more nuanced set of engagement stimuli that can help to maximise this contribution and optimise the returns that European societies receive for their substantial public investments in higher education. This means that are providing the necessary education and knowledge base to deliver the ambitions of Europe 2020 and support Europe's transition towards a successful, just and sustainable economy. This requires dealing with the uncertainty of the extent to which universities' contribute to supporting the development of the emerging knowledge economy. Here we define 'innovation' as the result of the set of activities by which different kinds of knowledge are combined to create solutions and interventions to solve problems, ultimately making society a better place (a form of Schumpeterian perspective). Those societal improvements may be through: (a) raising competitiveness and creating new markets and sectors, (b) improving the delivery of public services, particularly to vulnerable social groups, or (c) reducing our environmental impacts. We seek to understand the extent to which universities are supporting 'innovation' as here defined to distinguish between good and bad performances, as the first step in a process by which policy-makers actively intervene to improve the performance of universities overall.