EUKN - European Urban Knowledge Network - The rise of knowledge regions: emerging opportunities and challenges for universities

The rise of knowledge regions: emerging opportunities and challenges for universities

Introduction

‘The rise of knowledge regions’ focuses on the role of universities in regional innovation. It centres on city regions, since the urban dimension is considered a necessary condition for efficient knowledge creation. The report gives a good, but abstract, introduction to the potential that universities hold for the development of regional knowledge economies. The study is of interest to anyone involved in improving regional innovative capacity.

Description

What can a given region or nation do to bind knowledge and its proponents to a geographical area and economy to maintain and even expand the wealth and well-being of its citizens? What targeted actions can be taken to attract more knowledge workers and knowledge-based businesses and the accompanying social and economic benefits to our part of the world? Exploiting the full potential of our universities in fostering regional innovative competitiveness could hold the key to answering these questions.

The study aims to understand the current role of universities and future potential of universities in regional knowledge development. It describes the emerging phenomenon of the proactive knowledge region by analysing the processes of its development, the key actors and their interactions.

‘The rise of knowledge regions: emerging opportunities and challenges for universities’ addresses the following questions:

How do regional policy makers and major players in the knowledge institutions try to create optimal conditions for innovation?
What forms of cooperation are regarded as successful?
What exactly is the role of the university in this?
How can the university improve its own performance and how do policy makers contribute to its success?

Four city regions are studied to provide data:

Brno, Czech Republic
Barcelona, Spain
Manchester, United Kingdom
Øresund (comprised of Copenhagen, Roskilde, and Malmo), Denmark / Sweden

Methodology

The study is based upon:

a review on the most recent literature in the field
a series of interviews with professionals involved in university-industry-government cooperation schemes to foster regional innovation in the four European regions

The policy actions of other city-regions, in particular Montreal in Canada, were taken as benchmarks.

Conclusions

When developing knowledge regions, there are five specific functions that are attributed to universities:

identifying important new developments – not just scientific or technological, but also social and cultural developments
training and educating graduates for the knowledge region
providing the research base for the knowledge economy
transferring and exchanging knowledge that is not directly commercialisable
developing the individual and his or her ideas – universities often strive to give individual creativity as much scope as possible

Based upon the four case studies, the report identifies six main ingredients for successfully developing knowledge regions:

The first ingredient is ‘leadership’ – In each of the four case studies the initial vision and initiative to develop the common cause of knowledge region development begun with a very small group of people. In every city, not more than a handful of names were mentioned as the key political proponents of the knowledge region development. These were usually intermediaries or brokers, as individuals or as part of organisations, whose importance cannot be overestimated. Without this leadership, the studied cities would not have would not have built common interests as actively and concertedly across different institutions.
In terms of knowledge intensity there has to be critical mass and sufficient strengths and development potential available in the region . This includes a sufficient research and skills base as well as enough infrastructural assets which have created competitive advantage and international visibility. In this light the EU structural funds are to be mentioned. They have had a major impact on building the science infrastructure in Barcelona, Manchester and Brno.
All four cities point to cultural attitudes as key assets for a knowledge region. This includes the attitudes rooted in long-standing traditions of the respective regions as innovation- and technology-friendly environments. Another attitude is the ambition of being better than others – especially the capital city. The will to beat the expected power-house seems to play an important psychological role, which makes it easier to win different actors over to this cause of beating the traditional expected winner.
All four city-regions studied in this project spent a considerable amount of time and effort to involve different stakeholders in the formulation of regional innovation and knowledge development strategies. Such strategy formulation was judged to be important, first of all, for urgent pragmatic reasons, namely to acquire additional resources. However, the process of strategy formulation was also widely regarded as an important contribution to enhancing mutual understanding by bringing potential conflicts into a constructive negotiation process.
The multi actor strategy formulation made three things possible: firstly, joint lobbying of regional actors; secondly, the establishment or expansion of common science or technology-oriented infrastructures; lastly, the establishment of intermediary institutions to facilitate interaction between the regional players.
In all four case studies, industrial players, whether large or small, did not play a central role in the development of these knowledge regions, but rather that of the follower who clearly sees the benefits of the development. The public role of the private actor in developing knowledge regions is a theme that should be further studied.

Contact info

European University Association
Phone: +32 2 230 5544
info@eua.be

Publication date

15/11/2006

Researcher

Sybille Reichert

Article info
ISBN: 9789081069854

Links

Visit the European University Association website

Download 'The rise of knowledge regions: emerging opportunities and challenges for universities' (PDF, Eng, 240 KB)

Document type

research

Themes

Urban Policy > Economy knowledge & employment

Keywords

Research & innovation, Urban economy, Urban economy