Universities are under increasing pressure to help promote socio-economic growth in their local communities. However until now, no systematic, critical attention has been paid to the factors and mechanisms that currently make this process so daunting. In Universities and Regional Development, scholars from Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia critically address this knowledge gap, focusing on policy, organization, and the role of individual actors to uncover the challenges facing higher education institutions as they seek to engage with their regions. In a systematic and comparative manner, this book shows internal and external audiences why, how, and when the institutionalization of universities’ "third missions" should take place, and also: challenges conventional wisdom about the role of universities in society and the economy demonstrates how institutions in different nations and regions cope with local engagement combines the latest national, regional and local research with international perspectives integrates diverse conceptual and disciplinary frameworks Universities and Regional Development is a key resource for researchers and students of higher education and territorial development, educational policy makers, and university managers seeking to engage with the world beyond their university.

In a knowledge-based economy, universities are vital institutions. This volume explores the roles that universities can play in peripheral regions, contributing to processes of regional economic development and innovative growth. Including a series of case studies drawn from Portugal, Norway, Finland, the Czech Republic, Estonia and the Dutch-German border region, this will be the first book to offer a comprehensive comparative overview of universities in European economically peripheral regions. These studies seek to explore the tensions that arise in peripheral regions where there may not be obvious matches between university activities and regional strengths. Aimed at academics, policy-makers and practitioners working on regional innovation strategies, this volume brings a much-needed sense of realism and ambition for all those concerned with building successful regional societies at the periphery of the knowledge economy.

The Handbook on Universities and Regional Development offers a comprehensive and up-to-date insight into how academic institutions spur their surroundings. The volume sheds light on universities as regional development actors from a historical perspective by introducing institutional changes and discussing the interrelatedness of society, business and academia. It provides detailed investigations on various knowledge transfer mechanisms to help understand the diverse ways through which ideas and intellectual property can flow between universities and businesses. Detailed case studies from three continents (Europe, Asia, and America) demonstrate the highly contextual nature of the interactions between academia, industry and government.

The study of universities’ role in regional engagement has traditionally been focusing on exceptional cases. This book presents a reconceptualization which embraces its underlying complexity and proposes a roadmap for a renewed research agenda. Starting from the grassroots level of universities’ everyday engagements, the book delves into the manifold ways in which university knowledge agents build connections with regional partners. Through 11 empirical chapters, the authors not only chart the diversity among case institutions, engagement mechanisms, and regional contexts but also use that diversity to advance a novel conceptual framework, centered on the process of mundaneness, for unpacking university-regions’ everyday activities, taking into account the dynamic, complex, and co-evolving interplay between (a) key social agents and institutions, (b) the contexts in which they are embedded, as well as (c) the historical trajectories and strategic ambitions underpinning context-specific social arrangements and interactions that are mediated by temporal and spatial dimensions. Drawing on evolutionary economic geography, innovation studies, management and organization studies, and historical perspectives, the volume advances a new mode of understanding university-regional engagement as a form of extendable temporary coupling, which also helps to address perennial policy and managerial questions alike of what to do with universities that do not serve local labour market needs and/or are located in regions suffering from brain drain. The book illustrates such dynamics from diverse national contexts and three continents: Brazil, Caribbean, China, Italy, Norway, and Poland. This book will be valuable reading for advanced students, researchers, and policymakers working in economic geography, regional development, innovation, and higher education management. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This book analyses the role of universities as critical actors in the socio-economic development of peripheral regions in Norway and the Czech Republic. Examining the ambiguities of the traditional mission of a university in comparison to contemporary demands, the editors and contributors move past single-case analyses to adopt an integrated conceptual and analytical framework. The authors question whether universities can indeed ‘fix’ the conditions of any region they operate in, as is a common assumption, by examining peripheral regions, many of which have been devastated by natural or man-made disasters. Simultaneously acknowledging the complexities at the heart of both higher education institutions and regions, this book brings together a set of critical contributions that shed light on how universities can fulfil their role in peripheral regions rather than knowledge-intensive cities and towns. This uniquely researched book will be of interest to students and scholars of higher education, universities and communities, and education policy.

Universities are becoming more entrepreneurial, and for local communities and companies, this has increased their economic standings tenfold. However, the competitiveness of developing economies thanks to these financially focused institutions has likewise increased. Examining the Role of Entrepreneurial Universities in Regional Development provides emerging research exploring how universities foster and support entrepreneurship and the development of a more entrepreneurial organization and highlights the importance of this process for local communities and companies. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as institutional entrepreneurship, public management, and economic contribution, this book is ideally designed for university presidents, provosts, rectors, chancellors, board members, managers, business professionals, policymakers, academicians, students, and researchers.

Today, universities around the world find themselves going beyond the traditional roles of research and teaching to drive the development of local economies through collaborations with industry. At a time when regions with universities are seeking best practices among their peers, Shiri M. Breznitz argues against the notion that one university's successful technology transfer model can be easily transported to another. Rather, the impact that a university can have on its local economy must be understood in terms of its idiosyncratic internal mechanisms, as well as the state and regional markets within which it operates. To illustrate her argument, Breznitz undertakes a comparative analysis of two universities, Yale and Cambridge, and the different outcomes of their attempts at technology commercialization in biotech. By contrasting these two universities—their unique policies, organizational structure, institutional culture, and location within distinct national polities—she makes a powerful case for the idea that technology transfer is dependent on highly variable historical and environmental factors. Breznitz highlights key features to weigh and engage in developing future university and economic development policies that are tailor-made for their contexts.

Public Universities and Regional Growth examines evolutions in research and innovation at six University of California campuses. Each chapter presents a deep, historical analysis that traces the dynamic interaction between particular campuses and regional firms in industries that range from biotechnology, scientific instruments, and semiconductors, to software, wine, and wireless technologies. The book provides a uniquely comprehensive and cohesive look at the University of California's complex relationships with regional entrepreneurs. As a leading public institution, the UC is an examplar for other institutions of higher education at a time when the potential and value of these universities is under scrutiny. Any yet, by recent accounts, public research universities performed nearly 70% of all academic research and approximately 60% of federally funded R&D in the United States. Thoughtful and distinctive, Public Universities and Regional Growth illustrates the potential for universities to drive knowledge-based growth while revealing the California system as a uniquely powerful engine for innovation across its home state.

Regional economic development has attracted the interest of economists, geographers, planners and regional scientists for a long time. And, of course, it is a field that has developed a large practitioner cohort in government and business agencies from the national down to the state and local levels. In planning for cities and regions, both large and small, economic development issues now tend to be integrated into strategic planning processes. For at least the last 50 years, scholars from various disciplines have theorised about the nature of regional economic development, developing a range of models seeking to explain the process of regional economic development, and why it is that regions vary so much in their economic structure and performance and how these aspects of a region can change dramatically over time. Regional scientists in particular have developed a comprehensive tool-kit of methodologies to measure and monitor regional economic characteristics such as industry sectors, employment, income, value of production, investment, and the like, using both quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis, and focusing on both static and dynamic analysis. The 'father of regional science', Walter lsard, was the first to put together a comprehensive volume on techniques of regional analysis (Isard 1960), and since then a huge literature has emerged, including the many titles in the series published by Springer in which this book is published.

Canadian regional development today involves multiple actors operating within nested scales from local to national and even international levels. Recent approaches to making sense of this complexity have drawn on concepts such as multi-level governance, relational assets, integration, innovation, and learning regions. These new regionalist concepts have become increasingly global in their formation and application, yet there has been little critical analysis of Canadian regional development policies and programs or the theories and concepts upon which many contemporary regional development strategies are implicitly based. This volume offers the results of five years of cutting-edge empirical and theoretical analysis of changes in Canadian regional development and the potential of new approaches for improving the well-being of Canadian communities and regions, with an emphasis on rural regions. It situates the Canadian approach within comparative experiences and debates, offering the opportunity for broader lessons to be learnt. This book will be of interest to policy-makers and practitioners across Canada, and in other jurisdictions where lessons from the Canadian experience may be applicable. At the same time, the volume contributes to and updates regional development theories and concepts that are taught in our universities and colleges, and upon which future research and analysis will build.