Author(s): Benneworth PS; Dawley SJ
Abstract: Universities increasingly provide assistance to innovating firms, particularly in less successful regions lacking other support providers. Universities have to develop such support, just as consultancies learn to work with clients. In this paper, we use an innovation framework to explore how universities learn about developing such services, and the barriers they have to address to improve the development of such services.
Notes: This journal article connects a policy-related research report (commissioned by the Small Business Service for England) into a series of academic debates surrounding the roles of universities in the territorial innovation process. The paper attempts to make sense of the way universities and small firms collaborate within a peripheral region economy. The findings reveal the evolutionary nature of universities capacities to support local small firms, originating from a demand side pull from sophisticated firms leading to a broader range of collaborative processes with less sophisticated firms. In so doing the chapter offers an alternative to the much covered case studies of successful regions with high levels of university - business connections.
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Dr Stuart Dawley
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