Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), Innovation, and Regional Economic Development : Enhancing the entrepreneurial discovery process in regional development

Summary of the thesis This thesis is motivated by the observation that higher education institutions (HEIs) are currently been challenged in new ways to respond and transform to support the transition of regional and national economics. This study discusses how can higher education institutions (HEIs) enhance regional capabilities for innovation? The dissertation pursues two objectives. From a practical perspective, it aims to increase our knowledge of how the HEI contribution towards innovation and regional development is able to change the regional condition for industry development. From a theoretical perspective, it seeks to increase our understanding of how regions develop and change, with an emphasis on the heterogeneity and complexity of regional path dependent processes and the evolutionary processes of firms’ novel ways of searching for knowledge. The thesis draws from a longitudinal case study focused on the transition of Vestfold University College (currently the University of south-eastern Norway) from 1994 - 2016. The thesis research is conducted withina critical realist tradition and follows an explorative approach through use of a mix-method that combines longitudinal qualitative and quantitative research designs. The study shows that HEIs can build capabilities for innovation by reorienting a region’s knowledge base and the regional framework conditions for industry development within a specific region and industry in four ideal ways; 1) stimulating the spin-off and commercialisation of knowledge, 2) attracting external investment, 3) diversifying existing industry structure, and 4) upgrading the existing industry structure knowledge base. The capability of HEI to reorient regional conditions for industrial development are shown to be primarily discontinuous and shaped by the technological and market breakthrough from entrepreneurial actors and new policy schemes, and by mobilising industry resources in joint efforts to create new work forms for teaching, and combining teaching and research in new ways linked to third mission activities, that is, enhancing the entrepreneurial discovery process. The dissertation draws attention to the effect of a firm’s novel means of searching for knowledge, in the global-local context, on local path dependent processes and HEI capabilities for innovation. The thesis also demonstrate the tension between the politicians’ ambitions for HEIs and the realities that faced by HEI as well as firms in local development processes