The Generative and Developmental Roles of Universities in Regional Innovation Systems

This paper explores the state of the literature on the role that universities perform in the development of regional innovation systems. The predominant focus in the literature has been on institutional analysis of university-industry technology transfer. This is important but tends to underestimate the potentially broad-based 'third role' of universities in regional systems, as well as exploring the nature of, and possible explanations for, differences in the roles that uni-versities perform in different regional settings. An analytical framework is proposed for considering the nature of the role of universities in the development of regional innovation systems and explanation of variation in the roles performed by universities in different regional settings