A quadruple helix framework for university-led community innovation systems in Africa

87 A quadruple helix framework for university-led community innovation systems in Africa Pascal Doh Introduction This chapter is an offshoot of a doctoral study supervised by Professor Holtta, which investigated the role of higher education in poverty reduction in Africa (Doh 2012). The study found the necessity of a university-led community innovation system (CIS), of a quadruple structure in complementing the lack and weaknesses of national university systems in most developing countries. Indeed, gone are the days when the university was an ivory tower, disconnected and distanced from the realities of its environment. Today, the university is undergoing a second revolution, which involves a third mission of economic development, including poverty reduction. This revolution is leading to a search for the most appropriate frameworks within which the university will perform and contribute most effectively. While the triple helix of the university, industry and government partnership, (Etzkowitz & Leydesdoff 1997) and the national innovation system (NIS) (Lundvall 1992; Lundvall et al. 2002) seem to be developing as the way to strengthen the role of universities in economic 88 Pascal Doh Elias Pekkola & Jussi Kivistö & Vuokko Kohtamäki & Yuzhuo Cai & Anu Lyytinen (Eds.) development, developing and least-developed countries are generally lagging behind. Most African countries lack the appropriate frameworks to organise the systemic connection and role of their universities. Universities are often disconnected from their societies, local contexts and environments, either due to NIS that lack “systemness” (Doh 2012) or the sheer lack of frameworks. Whereas we will be portraying the NIS within which the triple helix operates as a starting point, this chapter presents the CIS as a framework that is likely to strengthen NIS in developing African countries because of its ability to more appropriately capture the local realities and innovations in these countries. This has been termed a university-led CIS of four helices. The chapter is composed from a desk review of literature on different dimensions of national innovations and frameworks on how universities respond to the economic development needs of their immediate environment. The chapter draws analogies and most of its data from a qualitatively conducted study on the roles of the university in economic development and poverty reduction in Africa, specifically a case study of Cameroon (Doh 2012). The systemic perspective of this study was built on national innovation system theory and the institutional adaptation perspective on the concepts of the entrepreneurial university and the third mission as the means through which the university responds to such economic development commitments. The chapter (as per the study) is theory driven, whereby the theoretical and conceptual issues are important in propelling the analyses and conclusions (Marshall & Rossman 1999). In the chapter, two questions are raised to address the research gap in terms of the role of universities in NIS and of the absence of frameworks that appropriately address the weaknesses of Africa’s innovation systems, such as: What is the university-led CIS, and (2) What factors and elements explain the relevance of the quadruple helix approach as a framework for CIS? 89 A quadruple helix framework for university-led community innovation systems in Africa Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives on Higher Education Management and Transformation The community innovation system in the national innovation system Muchie et al. (2011; 2003) summarise the CIS as a system’s capacity to mobilise and use resources, organise knowledge and human capital training and deploy institutions, put in place incentives and regulations to carry out favourite experiments on activities and functions that are undertaken by citizens at the grassroots and local communities. In effect, this CIS is supposed to be there as a director of attention to local innovation. By the same token, the university-led CIS conveys how the university interacts in the CIS, how it is steering the processes leading to a responsive CIS and how it is interacting with grassroots community actors. This refers to how communities and their universities respond to the innovation challenges they face and how they are accommodated in their responses. Doh (2012) situates the CIS as operating within a NIS, on a smaller geographical scale than the regional innovation system, to address the innovation needs and challenges of local communities. According to this perspective, the CIS is the means and framework reinforcing the effectiveness and responsiveness of the national and region innovation systems. Innovation is seen to refer to change, inventing something new as well as adding a new developmental stage to an existing product. An innovation system is, more or less, a system constituted of elements which interact in the production, diffusion and use of new and economically useful knowledge (Lundvall 1992). Misleadingly, most of the literature on innovation systems has misconstrued these systems as science-based technological systems. These assumptions challenge perspectives on different innovations, especially those relating to developing countries, whose economies are mostly informal, with significant innovations taking place in grassroots communities. Innovation does not pertain only to “new to the world” innovation and could be the absorption of technology and competence. It could simply result from “doing, using and interacting-DUI” (see Chimnade et al. 2010, 3; Jensen, Johnson & Lorenz 2007). It is important to underscore the NIS scholars project as relevant for developing countries in the broad approach of the innovation system, rooted 90 Pascal Doh Elias Pekkola & Jussi Kivistö & Vuokko Kohtamäki & Yuzhuo Cai & Anu Lyytinen (Eds.) in the activities of firms and the competences and capabilities of people, and not necessarily in terms of research and development (R&D), high tech and science-based industries (Lundvall et al. 2002). However this broad approach can be observed to have endless limits, with the elements and determinants of innovation difficult to define. The broad approach does not provide a place for the university. Doh (2012) postulates the triple helix as a starting point in conceiving a CIS since it is simpler and contains a leading role for universities. All the three actors in the triple helix are clearly defined. According to Doh (2012), university-led CIS are necessary to strengthen regional innovation systems. With the example of South Africa as an apparent leader in the innovation system approach to development in Africa (Netshiluvhi & Galada 2012), the regional innovation systems are still under development, that they are weak and that they seldom reflect a strong role for the university. The CIS concept, which is also taking shape in most of Africa, is still highly informal and does not enjoy national visibility (Netshiluvhi & Galada 2012). The emerging innovation systems do not articulate how the NIS is linked to communities at the local level. Finally, the sectoral innovation system approach (Brechi & Malerba 1997) has either been built on the formal science and technologybased approach of rich industrial countries, and not on the likes of social innovation in most developing countries. The university-led community innovation system It is possible to draw from the South African practices a geographical (regional) resource-driven approach, whereby the CIS is perceived from the perspective of a resource intensive economy in the region, which, if well nurtured, will lead to sustainable economic growth and social development (Netshiluvhi & Galada 2012). This dominant resource perspective is buttressed by the fact that very few of the regional innovation plans in South Africa have articulated the importance of the university. While the resource-based perspective cannot be completely ignored, Doh (2012) has maintained the importance of a knowledge-based approach, which is driven by the university. In fact, the figure 91 A quadruple helix framework for university-led community innovation systems in Africa Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives on Higher Education Management and Transformation depicting the CIS in Netshiluvhi and Galada (2012, 17) only identifies the government, parliament, ministries, provinces, councils, private sector, NGOs and community entrepreneurs as potential actors, without the university as a knowledge institution. Despite this weakness, what is common with the perspective adopted in Doh (2012) is the importance of involving all members of society in playing an active role in innovation, where especially the grassroots communities in the case of Africa are also responsible partners in the national innovation process, including all kinds of innovation, but especially social innovation. Social innovation has been defined by Netshiluvhi and Galada (2012) as any broad-based innovation (formal/informal, technological/nontechnological) that is social, both in its ends and means in terms of existing and new ideas, products, services, processes and models that more effectively meet social needs on a sustainable basis. Within this social innovation perspective, the CIS can be targeted at solving and mitigating particular development challenges at the grassroots, such as food scarcity, social pathologies, tropical disease and land erosion. Doh (2012, 192) has observed the innovation scholarship community as many analyse the role of the university in economic development as a fait accompli on the basis of macroeconomic theories, which seem to be built on the notion of the trickle-down effect of national innovation to the entire population, subsequently alleviating poverty. Such approaches fail to capture and systematically address the specific needs of socially inclusive and poverty-reducing innovations, including the distributional effects. Drawing on Altenburg (2009, 33–34), national innovation and economic policies may often be overly biased in addressing selective measures to deal with certain market failures and may end up with inappropriate conclusions. Doh (2012, 193) points out the phenomenon that poor developing countries operate on the premise that the poor in grassroots communities are only recipients of government planned activities because they are often considered ignorant, with nothing to offer. According to the Bertelsen and Muller (2003), paradoxically, it is the policymakers who are ignorant and usually know very little about these grassroots communities, for they are “highly knowledgeable and skilled and 92 Pascal Doh Elias Pekkola & Jussi Kivistö & Vuokko Kohtamäki & Yuzhuo Cai & Anu Lyytinen (Eds.) certainly not ignorant as the public often thinks” (p. 23). The consequence of this unfortunate perception is that significant social and production potential in poor rural communities is often disregarded, with significant innovation and economic development potential abandoned. Scholars have argued on the importance of mainstreaming poor rural communities and their related technologies in the national innovations of Africa. This then forms the basis of CIS conceived here as a (formal) framework on how grassroots innovations, knowledge and technologies are harnessed and transformed into national innovations (see Muchie et al. 2003; Altenburg 2003, Nji 2004; Bertelsen & Muller 2003, 123). A quadruple base of the community innovation system Considering which schools of thought which of the schools of thought grants a conspicuous position to the university in national innovation (see 2.1), Doh (2012) projected a community university as an extra angle in the triple helix, whereby the first three angles which make up the triple helix—university, industry and government—relation are complemented by a fourth angle for the community, as follows: The above quadruple approach was adopted to construct a university-led CIS for several reasons. First, the other models and NIS scholarly community (Doh 2012; 2017) 93 A quadruple helix framework for university-led community innovation systems in Africa Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives on Higher Education Management and Transformation (the case of Lundvall 1988; Nelson 1993) believe that it is either the firm or government play a leading role in national innovations (Sabato & Mackenzie 1982) but the triple helix centres on the leading role of universities. This is important to the community of higher education scholars, especially in developing countries where the university is a key knowledge institution. However, Doh (2012) goes further by suggesting that the triple helix is not sufficient for the development strategies of developing countries, in the sense that it focuses more on the university’s role with “formally established industries”, whereas industrial innovation and most of the economic activities in developing countries are highly informal (Gu 1999; Arocena & Sutz 1999). This weakness was demonstrated in Doh (2012), whereby universities in developing countries mostly go after formal and major industries. Doh (2012) highlights a gross lack of indicators such as budget lines, streams of income or memoranda of understanding in the universities in relation to activities with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) or generally in the local communities, whereas the universities in developing country contexts are surrounded much more by SMEs. A quadruple helix involving a community angle with a leading role of universities was likely to be more appropriate for a CIS, especially in terms of social innovation. This requires an understanding of this adapted version of the triple helix to a quadruple helix that is similar but peculiar to those of other NIS scholars. Carayannis et al. (2009), for instance, have introduced the notion of “civil” society to the triple helix, which is related to the additional angle herein (the community). However the emphasis herein is on the local grassroots community and the role of the university as the main driver is peculiar. Major actors of a university-led community innovation system According to the preceding analysis, the community angle constituting a quadruple helix-based CIS becomes a full-blown sub “national” system with connections to the major actors such as the university, government, industry and the local community. Since this CIS is built from the triple helix, the first 94 Pascal Doh Elias Pekkola & Jussi Kivistö & Vuokko Kohtamäki & Yuzhuo Cai & Anu Lyytinen (Eds.) three helices maintain roles similar to those of the triple helix, with connection to the local councils and communities: Table 1. Expected roles of the major actors in the quadruple helix (contextualised from the triple helix role analysis to a quadruple helix; Doh 2012, 126). Actor Role (s) 1. The Government Connecting the university to the local communities, designs university community innovation support programmes Connecting the local communities and universities to the industries Funding the connections Facilitating access to the markets Coordinating and regulating the interactions between the three 2. The University Knowledge, skills creator and supplier to industries and society A physical environment for research and teaching on local innovations Transmitting and disseminating the knowledge to industries Integrating the community knowledge into R&D and science and technology Providing incentives for academics to interact and cooperate with local communities and industries Academics constantly seek to relate to the knowledge and innovations from local communities Academics design the projects, apply for funding and link the innovations to industry 3. Community (Council) With local councils officials coordinating structures for local community innovations Connecting the local community to universities and industry Where the grassroots population is active in proposing its knowledge and innovations to universities Where councils are capable of linking innovations to the global market Where councils substitute the government as the designer and executor of national innovation policies and funder and regulator at the local level 4. Industry Cooperating with universities Providing resources to stimulate interaction between universities and the grassroots population Providing feedback to universities Linking interactions and the products of local innovation to the market, society and the global knowledge economy 95 A quadruple helix framework for university-led community innovation systems in Africa Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives on Higher Education Management and Transformation A few observations ought to be made from the above four actors of the quadruple helix. Although by deductive reasoning, CIS can be understood as the smaller spatial and local component of national and regional innovation systems, during the analyses, we found that the national government remains the major and largest actor in designing university-local community innovation activities, governing and regulating them. This suggests that an innovative entrepreneurial local community should reflect and translate the innovative capacity of a nation, the NIS and vice versa. Consequently, there was no obvious reason to alter the position of the government in the hierarchy of the four actors. In fact, innovation processes that take place at the local community level do not necessarily operate in a vacuum at the basic special units of the nation. They could be the results of system-wide innovation policy, structures, cultures and incentives. A second observation draws on the fact that the role of the university as a major actor and a knowledge, research and training institution does not change as much as in the triple helix. What changes is the importance of the innovative and entrepreneurial academics at the basic units of the university, who are likely to be involved in the informal processes and contacts with the local communities. They are also important in the identification of community knowledge and the development and transformation of these knowledge and technologies to economically useful knowledge. Drawn on Doh (2012), the (local) community actor(s) is understood as comprising a variety of sub-actors such as individuals with local grassroots knowledge, micro businesses and SMEs, councils, civic organisations and other development agents in the local communities. These are community-based organisations and social entrepreneurs that are active in innovation as well as in promoting local innovations and linking them to university actors. There is the need to highlight, within this community perspective, the importance of local councils as formal structures that could be charged with connecting grassroots community innovations to universities, industries and even the market. 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