A new configuration of actors, relations and procedures in the system of production, reproduction and exchange of knowledge began in the early 90s in Mexico. During such a period of very dynamic change, the triple-helix model can help to identify the new problems and find ways to confront them jointly. Artur da Rosa Pires and Eduardo Anselmo de Castro Universities can significantly contribute to consolidating the coherence of regional innovation systems, to promoting and stimulating co-operation networks and supporting the accumulation of both codified and tacit knowledge. These are vital attributes for regional economic performance under current competitive conditions. An explanatory model is developed based on Canadian intersectoral networks sufficiently connected that a phase transition to high interactivity can occur.
Innovations crystallize out of such highly connected networks.
The existence of critically complex communication networks that allowed this crystallization was as important as, or more important than, explicitly articulated government policies. The progress of the collaboration between ICI and University College, London to produce a detergent suitable for use with hard water is traced. The problems experienced seem largely connected with differing time-scales of industry and academia, and differences in research policy between ICI headquarters and its groups. In the past decade advances in molecular biology and methods of manufacture using biotechnology have led to an explosion of products and opened up new areas for treatment of disease.