ABSTRACT
Identifying the formal role of universities in stimulating regional technological and economic development is relatively new (Youtie and Shapira 2008). As recently as the 1980s, factors other than universities, such as the importance of government spending on defence, were considered as the main stimuli to hightech development in North America (Christy and Ironside 1987) and in the UK (Breheny and McQuaid 1987). An early exception to this was a report in the UK, The Cambridge Phenomenon (Segal Quince and Partners 1985), which argued that Cambridge University exerted a direct and indirect influence on the genesis of the high-tech economy. In the US, Annalee Saxenian's 1983 article on The Genesis of Silicon Valley appeared in the same year as Etzkowitz's paper on ‘the entrepreneurial university’. In the 1990s notable works were by Luger and Goldstein (1991), which reflectedf the growing number of science and research parks, and by Anselin et al. (1997) on local geographical spillovers from university research.
