Program on Globalization and Regional Innovation Systems

2 Universities have emerged as central actors in the knowledge-based economy. No longer confined to their traditional roles of teaching and conducting primary research, the famously successful examples of Stanford University and the growth of Silicon Valley, and MIT and the development of the ICT corridor of Route 128 indicate that they are increasingly viewed as key drivers of innovation and “major agents of economic growth”. Consequently, many policymakers view research universities as “knowledge factories” for the new economy with largely untapped reservoirs of potentially commercializable knowledge waiting to be taken up by firms and applied (Wolfe 2005b, 1). However, this overly mechanistic view of the process by which basic scientific research is transformed into economically viable products demonstrates not only a misconception of the commercialization process itself, but also of what universities can and should be expected to do. It is the flow of knowledge that drives innovation, but knowledge transfer and knowledge spillover within a regional economy is a fluid, iterative, and complex process involving many different actors. Universities tend to be followers of technologica