The governance of innovation from a European perspective, social articulation and transmission of knowledge

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to address the key developments concerning innovation at universities at a macro level. It describes the key trends and changes in the governance of universities and the transformation of universities into organizational actors. This also affects the governance on academic research in the sense that it leads to a gradual evolution of the specific public science system in which research is being initiated and executed. Design/methodology/approach Cultural evolution involves social articulation and transmission of knowledge. What makes a culture distinctive is how it distributes interactions in the information-space. Findings The innovation policies of the European Union play a noticeable, but not yet dominant, role in the EU member states, at least not in the large member states. The wide gap between the North of Europe and the South and East of Europe in innovative performance is – despite the innovation policies of the European Union – still difficult to overcome. Originality/value The actual innovative performance of ten European countries has been evaluated. Northern European countries show a higher score on the Innovation Index, whereas countries in Southern Europe score relatively low. Can we relate this difference to cultural factors?