Synergy in Knowledge-Based Innovation Systems at National and Regional Levels: The Triple-Helix Model and the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Unlike national systems of innovation, a knowledge-based economy is grounded in the volatility of discursive knowledge enabling us to specify expectations. Expectations can be improved by testing them against observations. Furthermore, expectations can be codified in different ways; for example, in terms of market perspectives or technological opportunities. The Fourth Industrial Revolution entails a transition to the reflexive entertaining of expectations in terms of models as increasingly the sources of innovations. The Triple-Helix synergy indicator enables us to use institutional arrangements as instantiations of the knowledge dynamics and thus to assess the generation of options and the reduction of uncertainty in information-theoretical terms. Using this indicator, one can assess empirically—in terms of negative bits of information; that is, redundancy—in which innovation systems and to what extent a technological revolution is taking place. View Full-Text