Innovation Governance: From the “Endless Frontier” to the Triple Helix

Abstract

A triple helix of university-industry-government relations, as the basis of innovation policy, is identified in both statist and laissez-faire regimes. Direct links in the United States among university, industry, and government formed during World War II were dismantled immediately after the war but have since been revived in a looser format. A triple helix innovation system comprising bottom-up, top-down, and lateral initiatives among university, industry, and government translates research into use. Ideological opposition to government-industry relationships is reduced by an indirect format of running such links through the university. This has had the consequence of increasing the university’s salience as an innovation actor. That government is strongly involved in U.S. innovation policy is increasingly accepted. But why was this policy regime established and how did resistance to its emplacement paradoxically strengthen implementation, transforming a public/private double helix into a university-industry-government triple helix?