“While a Storm is Raging on the Open Sea”: Regional Development in a Knowledge-based Economy

The Triple Helix of university-industry-government relations is elaborated into a systemic model that accounts for interactions among three dimensions. By distinguishing between the respective micro-operations, this model enables us to recombine the “Mode 2” thesis of a new production of scientific knowledge and the study of systems of innovation with the neoclassical perspective on the dynamics of the market. The mutual information in three dimensions provides us with an indicator for the self-organization of the resulting network systems. The probabilistic entropy in this mutual information can be negative in knowledgebased configurations. The knowledge base of an economy can be considered as a secondorder interaction effect among interactions at interfaces between institutions and functions in different spheres. Proximity enhances the chances for couplings and, therefore, the formation of technological trajectories. The next-order regime of the knowledge base, however, can be expected to remain pending as selection pressure. JEL Classifications: O14, O30, R11, R58 “While a Storm is Raging on the Open Sea”