Abstract Quadruple collaboration has risen rapidly in place of the traditional triple helix model of institutional collaboration between universities, governments, and companies. Loet Leydesdorff and Helen Lawton Smith (2022) approach this challenge by aiming to resolve the issue of evaluating and analyzing various quadruple and n-tuple helices. This article seeks to recognize the increasing complexity of new and developing issues in quadruple and n-tuple helices as a response to their research. Higher order helices raise a number of important scientific difficulties, including conceptual and practical issues. The goal of this contribution is to highlight some of the major challenges involved with researching multiple helixes in terms of knowledge innovation, as well as to offer some alternative areas for future research on n-tuple helices measurement.

Abstract The article links upgrading in the global value chains with the triple helix concept by focusing on business-academia collaborations that played a part in firms’ capacity to upgrade. Both are crucial for Central Eastern European countries, which face the need to restructure their economies and escape the “middle income trap”. The article asks the following research question: how can public policy encourage business-academia collaboration or other types of activities that contribute to firm upgrading? Data on four different case studies in Lithuania is analysed to answer this question. Results indicate that building endogenous technological capacity through a variety of business-university collaboration types is needed to attract higher-value foreign direct investment and facilitate intersectoral and functional global value chain upgrading. Furthermore, besides research and development, educating and training the labour force are likely to be even more poweful drivers for business-academia collaboration in Central and Eastern Europe.

Extant research shows that universities do not usually foster an inclusive innovation system. This paper examines an innovation program at Zhejiang University that targeted rural areas in China, and that sought to promote an inclusive innovation system. This case illuminates how universities could play a critical role in configuring inclusive regional innovation systems by means of selection, improvement and diffusion of technology, dissemination and absorption of knowledge, access to science and technology, intermediation between the actors of innovation, training skilled labor, and cultivating talent. We underscore how the inclusive innovation program of Zhejiang University allowed this university to help realize the enormous consumption, production, and entrepreneurial potential of low-income households in rural China.

Many science support mechanisms aim to combine excellent research with explicit expectations of societal impact. Temporary research centres such as ‘Centres of Excellence’ and ‘Centre of Excellence in Research and Innovation’ have become widespread. These centres are expected to produce research that creates future economic benefits and contributes to solving society’s challenges, but little is known about the researchers that inhabit such centres. In this paper, we ask how and to what extent centres affect individual researchers’ identity and scientific practice. Based on interviews with 33 researchers affiliated with 8 centres in Sweden and Norway, and on institutional logics as the analytical framework, we find 4 broad types of identities with corresponding practices. The extent to which individuals experience tensions depend upon the compatibility and centrality of the two institutional logics of excellence and innovation within the centre context. Engagement in innovation seems unproblematic and common in research-oriented centres where the centrality of the innovation logic is low, while individuals in centres devoted to both science and innovation in emerging fields of research or with weak social ties to their partners more frequently expressed tension and dissatisfaction.

Synergy within a Triple Helix innovation system has been measured in relevant literature using mutual information and transmission power, all based on Shannon’s information theory. However, as a complex system, Triple Helix relationships may also be analysed with various techniques and tools from other disciplines among which game theory. Thus, the synergy may be measured with indicators like the core, the Shapley value and the nucleolus. The core measures the extent of the synergy, the Shapley value indicates an actor’s strength to lead to and create synergy and the nucleolus determines an actor’s strength to maintain synergy. The Triple Helix innovation systems of eight countries among which four developed—USA, UK, Germany and France—and four emerging—Russia, India, Brazil and China—were analysed based on their scientific output using game theory. It appears that the biggest Triple Helix science producer has more power to lead to and create synergy; government shows solidarity to maintain synergy within the innovation system. The level of synergy is higher in developing countries (led by France, 1.7–2%) than in emerging ones (led by Brazil, less than or equal to 1%), operating a division of selected countries according to their level of development. The study shows that state intervention in the economy influences the position of the core on a ternary diagram.

This paper analyses the barriers to innovation and innovativeness in the Ghana National System of Innovation (GNSI) in terms of the quadrilateral relationships between the following four actors: (a) government; (b) medium- and high-technology industries; (c) knowledge-based institutions; and (d) arbitrageurs (venture capital, finance capital and knowledge brokers). The paper contributes to research on systems of innovation in view of the wide recognition of the importance of National System of Innovation (NSI) for economic performance. The barriers to innovation in Ghana identified, through factor analysis, provide a framework to isolate systemic problems and enable policy makers to enhance effective policy delivery at the system level. This empowers the four actors to overcome the specific barriers to innovation and thus enabling the overall GNSI, through increased effectiveness and efficiency, to achieve higher levels of competitiveness. We find that barriers to innovation and innovativeness in Ghana factor significantly into the following: skills-Information and Communication Technology (ICT) capability/capacity; unsophisticated markets; deficient fiscal policy; and organisational risks.

Knowledge-infused clusters, involving governmental and university, as well as firm actors are the epitome of contemporary economic development strategy. The role of Southern Oregon University (SOU) in the inception of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) gives rise to a model for education-focused universities to play a significant role in local economic development through creation of cultural clusters from existing knowledge. Since the arts as well as the sciences provide a base for knowledge-based clusters, all universities have the potential to contribute to economic and social development. In a traditional conception of academic entrepreneurship, a research base may be a pre-requisite to creating spin-offs. However, if we expand entrepreneurship into a broader conception to map its various forms of commercial, social, cultural and civic entrepreneurship, a teaching university may also be the source of new economic activity. The convergence of entrepreneurship, triple helix, cluster and Civil Society frameworks, exemplified by the Ashland case, may provide a model as instructive as Silicon Valley, to seekers of a general theory and practice of regional innovation. A vibrant Civil Society that provides a fertile seedbed for civic entrepreneurship and triple helix interactions enhances clustering.

We used mutual information and transmission power as indicators of knowledge circulation between innovation actors. The units of analysis in scientific publications are indexed in the Web of Science with at least one West African-based address. We found that at the regional level, the university is the biggest knowledge producer followed by the government and industry in that order; however, at the national level, the government is the biggest information producer in majority of countries. The industrial sector output is weak both at the regional level and individual country level. It is even null in some countries. Mutual information indicated the existence of synergy between the three actors, both at the regional and national levels. However, its value is too low to allow for knowledge circulating fluently among actors.