The Mutual Information of University-Industry-Government Relations: An Indicator of the Triple Helix Dynamics

Loet Leydesdorff Science & Technology Dynamics, University of Amsterdam Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR) Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam, The Netherlands loet@leydesdorff.net ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/

Abstract

University-industry-government relations provide a networked infrastructure for knowledge-based innovation systems. This infrastructure organizes the dynamic fluxes locally and the knowledge base remains emergent given these conditions. Whereas the relations between the institutions can be measured as variables, the interacting fluxes generate a probabilistic entropy. The mutual information among the three institutional dimensions provides us with an indicator of this entropy. When this indicator is negative, self-organization can be expected. The self- organizing dynamic may temporarily be stabilized in the overlay of communications among the carrying agencies. The various dynamics of Triple Helix relations at the global and national levels, in different databases, and in different regions of the world, are distinguished by applying this indicator to scientometric and webometric data.

1. Introduction

In 1953, Linus Pauling and Robert B. Corey proposed that DNA was made up of three chains, twisted around each other in ropelike helices (Pauling & Corey, 1953). A few months later, James Watson and Francis Crick proposed the double helix, which was then quickly accepted as the correct structure of DNA (Watson & Crick, 1953). This discovery led to a Nobel Prize (Watson, 1970).

Double helices can under circumstances stabilize in a coevolution, but triple helices may contain all kinds of chaotic behaviour (Poincaré, 1905). Triple Helix models continue to be useful in studying transition processes, for example, in crystallography and molecular biology. More recently, Richard Lewontin (2000) used the metaphor of a Triple Helix for modeling the relations between genes, organisms, and environments.

In a different context, Henry Etzkowitz and I introduced a Triple Helix model for the dynamics of university-industry-government relations (Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 1995). Our argument for using this neo-evolutionary model was that a knowledge-based regime of innovations can be expected to remain in transition. A Triple Helix can contain double helices as temporary stabilizations, but a system of three dynamics is meta-stabilized. Under specific conditions the next-order system of an overlay of communications can also be globalized and then exhibit self- organization. Globalization means in this context that the next-order (emerging) overlay gains priority in determining the dynamics of the underlying ones (on which

2 it rests). Thus, a Triple Helix model may be sufficiently complex to encompass the different species of observable behaviour in the networks under study.

The advantages of using the Triple Helix model can be specified with reference to different research traditions. First, one is able to study specific configurations of university-industry-government relations as instantiations of the Triple Helix dynamics of a knowledge-based innovation system (Giddens, 1984; Leydesdorff & Etzkowitz, 1998). In this context of specification, the Triple Helix metaphor functions as a heuristics. The institutional configurations in knowledge-based systems can be considered as the outcome of three (functional) subdynamics of competitive systems: (a) the economic dynamic of wealth generation through exchange, (b) the knowledge-based dynamic of reconstruction and innovation over time, and (c) the political and managerial need and urge for normative control at the interfaces. The carriers of these three functions do no longer have to exhibit a one- to-one correspondence to industry, university, and government, respectively. The institutions can be expected to experiment with new formats in their mutual arrangements (Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 1997).

While the heuristic application of the Triple Helix metaphor can be made useful for the historical specification, the neo-evolutionary model of the two layers of functions and institutions operating upon each other opens a space of possible interactions. The evolutionary system has an option to reconstruct itself in the present with reference to the historical configurations that have occurred. The functional dimension can be provided with priority if a next-order system (e.g., a

3 relevant selection environment) can be defined. Are the institutional arrangements still functional?

For example, participants who are entrained in co-evolutions of mutual shaping between two helices can be expected to ‘lock-in’ (David, 1985; Arthur, 1988). The internal perspectives of these participant-observers can be distinguished from the perspective of an external (that is,

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