ABSTRACT
The Triple-Helix model of industry-policy-knowledge relationships was introduced into
the academic and policy worlds by the work of Leydesdorff and Etzkowitz (1996), who
argued that these rich triplicate relationships were conspicuously influential in the
shaping of systems for innovation and growth. Arguing against the familiar and much
critiqued linear interpretation of knowledge creation, they explain that “a spiral model of
innovation is required to capture multiple reciprocal linkages at different stages of the
capitalization of knowledge” (Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 1997, p. 1). Observing that the
present historical epoch is notable for its state of social, economic and cultural flux, inno-
vation systems are increasingly structured, not by the prevailing institutional arrangements
for innovation but by the interactions between agents and the systems of communication
and intermediation (including new temporary organizations) they create to enable new
innovation to take place (Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 2000). The sense of intense reflexivity
this introduces into the system has the effect of de-centring traditional institutional
arrangements, de-coupling institutions from their traditional functions and setting in
motion an evolutionary process of functional combination and re-combination. In a
very real sense, historic institutional certainties weaken, new narratives of purpose and
intention are created, and new temporary communities of practice-and their necessary
organizational arrangements-emerge and submerge according to the dialectic of recur-
sion and reflexivity between the helices of the Triple Helix.
