The University as a Participant of the Regional Innovation Ecosystem: A Typology of Basic Behavioral Strategies

Abstract

This research is based on studying foreign works devoted to universities as participants of regional innovation ecosystems. The purpose of the article is to typologize basic strategies of universities’ behavior. The authors analyze the cases of various universities attempting to transform their behavior in accordance with the logic of the ecosystem approach. The authors’ typology of universities’ behavior strategies (passive, neutral, active) contributes to the literature on regional innovation ecosystems and the universities’ changing role in them. These three types are further subdivided into seven basic strategies of universities’ behavior according to the degree of their involvement in regional innovation processes, according to the internal and external environments of the university, as well as to the goals and objectives facing them. These strategies differ in five parameters: social and economic context, incentives for transformation, ecosystem structure, key participants’ roles, university’s goals and functions. The parameters are derived from a set of approaches synthesized by the «umbrella concept» of regional innovation ecosystems: the stakeholder approach, the concept of open innovations, the theory of agency relations, the transformational approach, the triple helix model and the quadruple helix model of innovation. The article might be of interest for those researchers who study the problems of regions’ economic and innovative development and the transformations of the modern higher education system in the world and in Russia. Of no less interest might it be for university managers, for representatives of regional authorities, and for businessmen aimed at cooperation with universities.