Metropolitan innovation system as a catalyst for creativity and collaboration: examining the role of universities in creating innovations
Joanna Karaś
Innovations arise mostly at the edges of disciplines and in places open to representatives of different social groups. Urban ecosystem provides an environment where people can network and collectively develop extraordinary ideas which are critical for the prosperity of our world. The quality which allows people to generate novel ideas and subsequently transform them into innovations is creativity. Although creativity is often treated as an individual phenomenon, it is inevitably a social process. Moreover, creativity thrives in a very specific social environment. Great metropolitan areas host world’s leading universities which attract the most talented individuals. Metropolitan areas are also collaboration boosters between academia and other spheres of economy. This is fundamentally important as it makes it possible to transform ideas into innovations which are crucial for achieving long-term economic growth and social welfare. The main advantage of metropolitan areas over other areas lies in the spatial concentration of actors such as companies, research centres, universities, venture capital funds, and their mutual accessibility within a particular metropolitan innovation system. An innovation ecosystem refers to a network of relationships through which information and talent flow through systems of sustained value co-creation The primary goal of this research is to explore the interrelations between the different actors of selected metropolitan innovation systems and to examine the role of creativity and collaboration in creating innovations. The secondary goal is to establish the role of academia for creating innovations which are crucial for maintaining constant economic growth and social welfare. To achieve the goal of this research the several methods will be used. The empirical part of the research will be based on a case study of selected metropolitan areas. To examine the interrelations among different actors of the metropolitan innovation systems the new version of the Quintuple Helix model will be applied. Further quantitative study will examine collaboration using a social network analysis (SNA) approach. The main data sources are used to quantify collaboration are PATSTAT database (to collect patents) and SCOPUS database (to collect publications).
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