Abstract
While broad “Triple Helix” frameworks of industry, government and university collaborations have the potential to enhance innovation and economic development at macro-levels, at the micro-level of the firm it should not be assumed that such relationships are uniform in character or outcomes. Each firm will negotiate and develop its own set of relationships with other innovation system actors based on its capabilities and strategies. To better understand these dynamics, particularly from the perspective of small and medium-sized enterprises, this study probes the micro-level characteristics and impacts of external enterprise relationships. Novel website-based Triple Helix measures are introduced that extend the analytical scope beyond customary indicators (such as patent analysis or entropy measures) to include communication and coordination among all three helices at the micro-level of individual firms. This approach is used to explore the micro-level characteristics and impacts of industry, government and university relations for small and medium-sized enterprises by analyzing a subset of 271 U.S. green goods small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises. We compare the website-based measures with case study results to authenticate the method. A panel data regression model is then employed to analyze the simultaneous impacts of various combinations of industry, government and university links on firm sales growth (2008–2011), with controls for region, scale, and application domains. The ability of website-based indicators to distinguish the impacts of different mixes of Triple Helix relations is demonstrated. While relationships with all three helices have a positive total marginal effect on firm sales growth, local relationships and relationships that emphasize links with government and industry make particularly notable contributions to growth in the sample green goods enterprises. The implications of these findings are discussed.
Highlights
Over the last three decades, there has been much discussion of the role of university, industry, and government collaborations in advancing innovation and economic development
We investigate research questions concerning how the growth of small firms is influenced by involvement in, and linkages to, Triple Helix actors; and how such influences might differ by sector/helix and at different levels of innovation systems
We focus on the three questions highlighted in the previous section: (1) Do Triple Helix relationships benefit the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)? (2) How do Triple Helix relations with actors from different helices and different mixes of Triple Helix relationships influence firm growth? (3) How do relationships with Triple Helix actors from different levels of innovation systems impact firm growth? We target our empirical research to U.S green goods manufacturing SMEs identified through a sampling strategy discussed below
Summary
Over the last three decades, there has been much discussion of the role of university, industry, and government collaborations in advancing innovation and economic development. There is an array of published work, including in management, economics, regional development, technology transfer, and innovation policy, which references the Triple Helix framework and comparable ideas (see, for example, Carayannis et al, 2012) of relationships among key innovation system actors. This body of literature includes work from both institutional and evolutionary perspectives (Meyer et al, 2014; Ranga and Etzkowitz, 2013). The new strategy must establish “a role for the federal government, industry, universities and laboratories” (Ogden et al, 2008)
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