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At its essence, the triple helix model is a partnership between the industrial, academia and governmental groups which recognizes the differing goals and stakeholder communities of these three groups but emphasizes on the common interest of those groups in order to provide value to the societies in which they reside. It is often operationalized as cosponsored programs. These programs support both small and large firms to transfer technologies from government and academic research laboratories and have enabled societies to more greatly benefit from the technological research that those same societies fund.
The landmark attempt towards the triple helix model was made by the U.S. when it enacted the Bayh-Dole legislation in 1980. This legislation granted permission for federally funded researchers to file for patents, and to issue licenses for these patents to other parties, thereby increasing participating of U.S. universities in national patenting. Conversely, in Eastern Europe, during the transition from socialism, some reformers were trying to remove government from a role in science and technology policy. Innovation systems were largely coming to a halt. Even though foreign direct investment was encouraged, it seldom involved utilizing local R&D resources. More recently, political leaders are moving away from that rigid position and bringing government back into the picture to take advantage of the R&D resources left behind from the previous era.
In the U.S., government-industry relations assumed increased significance in the 1990s even as university-industry bonds came to the forefront of attention in the 1980s. In much of the European Community these two sets of bilateral relations developed in reverse sequence with academic-industry connections following upon the development of government-industry relations. Academic-industry-government relations in the U.S. are taking on the cast that government-industry labor relations have long had in Europe. In the EU, EU sponsored activities, other efforts by European governments, NEXUS, IVAM are all examples of Government, Academia and Industry working together in order to maximize the commercial potential of macro and nano technologies in Europe.
This post in Part I on the larger area I intend to cover on the triple helix model for Technology Transfer on this blog.
References and Suggested reading:
- Dr. Steven Walsh, ‘The Use of the Triple Helix Concept in Accelerating the Pace of Commercialization of Micro and Nano Technology Based Products’, available at http://www.cmc.ca/news/events/cwmems01/presentations/walsh.pdf
- Richard Barras, ‘Interactive Innovation in Financial and Business Services: The vanguard of the Service Revolution,” Research Policy, 19 (1990) 215- 37.
- Loet Leydesdorff & Martin Meyer, ‘The Decline of University Patenting & the End of the Bayh-Dole Effect’, Scientometrics, available at http://users.fmg.uva.nl/lleydesdorff/Bayh-Dole/index.htm
- Henry Etzkowitz, “The Bi-Evolution of the University in the Triple Helix Era,” available at http://www.ie.ufrj.br/eventos/seminarios/pesquisa/a_universidade_e_o_desenvolvimento_regional.pdf.
