This paper has been prepared under the EC TSER Programme's TIPIK Project, for pesentation to the 3 rd TIPIK Workshop held in Strasbourg, at BETA, University of Louis Pasteur, 24 th April 1999. We are grateful for the comments and suggestions received from colleagues in the TIPIK Project, although it has not been possible for all of those to be absorbed in the present version. Please do not reproduce or quote without permission of the authors. Contact authors at:

Can the knowledge base of an economy be measured? In this study, we combine the perspective of regional economics on the interrelationships among technology, organization, and territory with the triple-helix model, and offer the mutual information in three dimensions as an indicator of the configuration. When this probabilistic entropy is negative, the configuration reduces the uncertainty that prevails at the systems level. Data about more than a million Dutch companies are used for testing the indicator. The data contain postal codes (geography), sector codes (proxy for technology), and firm sizes in terms of number of employees (proxy for organization). The configurations are mapped at three levels: national (NUTS-1), provincial (NUTS-2), and regional (NUTS-3). The levels are cross-tabled with the knowledge-intensive sectors and services. The results suggest that medium-tech sectors contribute to the knowledge base of an economy more than high-tech ones. Knowledgeintensive services have an uncoupling effect, but less so at the high-tech end of these services.

2. The Triple Helix as a model of the knowledge-based economy......................................................... 3 3. Knowledge as a social coordination mechanism.................................................................................8 4. Neo-evolutionary dynamics in a Triple Helix of coordination mechanism...................................... 12

p. ii This document is distributed by the International Organisation for Knowledge Economy and Enterprise Development (IKED) IKED is an independent, non-profit association and international organisation focusing on the emerging issues of the knowledge-based economy. IKED specialises in activities linking the primary actors forming the knowledge-based economy: government, industry, academia and civil society. The organisation engages in international networks, arranges policy forums and policy reviews, and works with partners aiming for reforms and concrete actions in support of the development and use of knowledge.

Alongside the neo-institutional model of networked relations among universities, industries, and governments, the Triple Helix can be provided with a neo-evolutionary interpretation as three selection environments operating upon one another: markets, organizations, and technological opportunities. How are technological innovation systems different from national ones? The three selection environments fulfill social functions: wealth creation, organization control, and organized knowledge production. The main carriers of this system—industry, government, and academia—provide the variation both recursively and by interacting among them under the pressure of competition. Empirical case studies enable us to understand how these evolutionary mechanisms can be expected to operate in historical instance. The model is needed for distinguishing, for example, between trajectories and regimes.

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This paper builds upon and extends existing studies of scientific and technological specialisation by proposing a broader theoretical framework to compare sectoral knowledge bases across countries. It puts forward the concepts of knowledge persistence and knowledge integration as the relevant dimensions along which knowledge bases can be mapped. Persistence is studied by analysing the evolution of specialisation over time. It hints at the cumulative, path dependent nature of learning processes. Integration is studied by analysing the evolution of specialisation across different typologies of research. It hints at the complex, non-linear interdependencies that link the scientific and technological domains. These concepts are operationalised by designing and analysing an original data set encompassing 630,000 peer-reviewed papers published between 1989 and 1996 in 11 chemistry and pharmacology-related fields across three types of research (i.e. basic, applied and development). On this basis, we interpret the knowledge sourcing decisions of the largest EU chemical and pharmaceutical companies as revealed by the PACE survey. It is argued that countries with high degrees of both persistence and integration (e.g. the US in pharmacology) are the most likely sources of useful research

this report has been requested by the UK Office of Science and Technology

Draft for comment- not for citation

IST project "New Indicators for the Knowledge-Based Economy " is acknowledged.