The “start-up factor”

There is a global movement towards encouraging the formation of knowledge-based firms, irrespective of regional industrial or research intensity. ¹ Whether starting from a forward linear advanced research base or a reverse linear perspective of meeting unmet needs, policy-makers, from Leuven to Lagos, seek economic development and employment growth by capitalizing old or new knowledge resources. Policy-makers still offer tax breaks and other incentives to retain or attract branches of large firms, exemplified by the recent struggle between New York and New Jersey states to relocate elements of the UK Pearson Educational firm from one state to another that resulted in a reshuffling of assets and a loss of tax revenues to both states but no overall increase in jobs in the New York metropolitan region. Governments are still at the mercy of savvy companies able and willing to play them off against each other for their own benefit. Indeed, much governmental resources are still committed to large employers in the search for quick, highly visible, results.