TRIPLE HELIX EVALUATION: HOW TO TEST A NEW CONCEPT WITH OLD INDICATORS?

Triple Helix concept encourages actors (university-government-industry) to work in an open space of circulation of aspirations, knowledge and innovation. This open space of circulation is a novelty (Dzisah&Etzkowitz, 2008), which requires deep understanding and internalizing as a personal and collective value where collaboration is a source of a sustainable success. To evaluate how much Triple Helix as a social organisation novelty is contributing to an overall prosperity, new indicators consistent with this new conceptual framework are needed. In last 20 years Triple Helix developed into a widely accepted conceptual framework which brings together knowledge, consensus and innovations of three (or four) major social actors: university – government – industry (and civil society) and provide better cradle for social and economic development (Etzkowitz&Leydesdorff, 2000). But the departure from Triple Helix as an intuitive guide for policy makers and researchers to a model of social organisation requires further work on identifying relations between major actors. This paper will carefully examine what existing rankings offer to the Triple Helix conceptual framework in order to test relations among major actors and to identify the best possible set of variables and indicators for describing three major attributes of each actor (attitudes, activities and aspirations). It is not only important to find the best fit of descriptors of crucial attributes of major actors in Triple Helix concept, but to challenge how to measure expected result – what we consider as a sustainable success? Should we make a major effort to replace GDP with wellbeing indicator, happiness index, or what?