Ecosystems Leverage Diversity

Policy-makers often seek to build “knowledge economies,” for their economic development benefits. Universities have historically been the primary generators of new knowledge, and have some of the requisite infrastructures and resources to drive innovation and foster spillovers into the surrounding economy. Silicon Valley has Stanford; the Boston area has MIT; Cambridge (UK) has the University of Cambridge. This concomitance has spawned a whole body of thinking about the interrelationships of universities, and the public and private sectors in fostering innovation-driven economic growth.

In addition to their education and research mandates, universities are often – themselves – stepping up to the role as key players in regional economic development. These institutions wrestle with questions like what their role and priorities should be, and how to foster innovation ecosystems – the self-sustaining networks that create synergies among innovators and enablers.

A major pitfall is a cookie-cutter, “one-size-fits-all” approach. Every ecosystem is unique…