Open Innovation Diplomacy: the Quadruple Innovation Helix Concept and the “mode 3” Knowledge Production System in a 21st Century Fractal Research, Education a and Innovation (freie) Ecosystem

Developed and developing economies alike face increased resource scarcity and competitive rivalry. Science and technology increasingly appear as a main source of competitive and sustainable advantage for nations and regions alike. However, the key determinant of their efficacy is the quality and quantity of entrepreneurship-enabled innovation that unlocks and captures the pecuniary benefits of the science enterprise in the form of private, public or hybrid goods. In this context, linking university basic and applied research with the market, via technology transfer and commercialization mechanisms including government-university-industry partnerships and risk capital investments, constitutes the essential trigger mechanism and driving device for sustainable competitive advantage and prosperity. In short, university researchers properly informed, empowered, and supported are bound to emerge as the architects of a prosperity that is founded on a solid foundation of scientific and technological knowledge, experience, and expertise and not in fleeting and conjectural “ financial engineering” schemes. Building on these constituent elements of technology transfer and commercialization, Open Innovation Diplomacy (Carayannis, 2010, 2011) encompasses the concept and practice of bridging distance and other divides (cultural, socio-economic, technological, etc) with focused and properly targeted initiatives to connect ideas and solutions with markets and investors ready to appreciate them and nurture them to their full potential. The emerging gloCalizing, globalizing and localizing (Carayannis and von Zedwitz, 2005; Carayannis and Alexander, 2006), frontier of converging systems, networks and sectors of innovation that is driven by increasingly complex, non-linear and dynamic processes of knowledge creation, diffusion and use, confronts us with the need to re-conceptualize – if not re-invent – the ways and means that knowledge production, utilization and renewal takes place in the context of the knowledge economy and society (gloCal knowledge economy and society).Perspectives from and about different parts of the world and diverse human, socioeconomic, technological and cultural contexts are inter-woven to produce an emerging new worldview on how specialized knowledge, that is embedded in a particular socio-technical context, can serve as the unit of reference for stocks and flows of a hybrid, public/private, tacit/codified, tangible/virtual good that represents the building block of the knowledge economy, society and polity. We postulate that one approach to such a re-conceptualization is what we call the “Mode 3” Knowledge Production System (expanding and extending the “Mode 1” and “Mode 2” knowledge production systems) which is at the heart of the Fractal Research, Education and Innovation Ecosystem (FREIE) (Carayannis, 2011) consisting of