ABSTRACT
From the mid-1980s onwards, studies of geographies of innovation have established that high-tech firms cluster around universities in a way that older industries such as cars and steel did not. Now a university’s presence is identified as being a key factor without which high-tech activity would have been unlikely to develop in a location and even less likely to grow: the large research university is a catalyst, whether or not it is proactively involved in that development (Doutriaux 2003 on research in Canada). This association was not always so. It was military and other public research establishments that were identified as having a significant impact on the growth of high-tech industry in some regions (see for example Breheny and McQuaid 1987 on Berkshire in the UK and Markusen et al. 1986 in the US). This chapter then is about why the university-territory interface has now assumed such a politically important role in regional and local economic development. It sets out the arguments that are supported or challenged by evidence in later chapters.
