Responsible knowledge-based innovation

" ~"~orruption," a charge leveled by ,Professor Craig ~.,,,Calhoun, after Jennifer Washburn s allegations in University, Inc., is a serious one. It is not at all clear to me that either has the goods on universities for this indictment to hold---especially when Calhoun, perhaps more politic than prosecutoriai, argues toward the end of his paper that structural conditions lie at the heart of universities' unseemly behavior: The commercialized university is a symptom of a deeper, pervasive commodification of public life, rather than an aberration. Distressing as this symptom may be, as "corruption" it also presents more than a hint of democratization. The social forces that level charges of corruption are often elites defending a system of traditional values against patronage, spoils, profit--but also merit, competition, the crossing of social boundaries, and other practices with a decidedly egalitarian or populist edge. And as clearly as Calhoun acknowledges that the commercial orientation of universities is not new to the BayhDole era, he just as clearly laments the passing of an age when universities and academics were more distant from the rough-and-tumble of Tocquevillean democracy. However legitimate we consider the forces that have given rise to the commercialized university, we must understand more explicitly than Calhoun has let on that there is a political economy, that is, a dynamic logic of interests to them. Known now in the literature as the "triple helix" for the tight intertwining and mutual affinity of the government, commercial, and academic sectors, this political economy of knowledge-based innovation impels, sustains, and benefits from the changes Calhoun and Washburn lament. Although Washburn offers remedies, even Calhoun agrees that, focused as they are at the margins of conflicts of interest, they are "surprisingly modest." More than such marginal regulations to the central dynamics of the triple helix, what is needed is the articulation and institutionalization of a competitive logic of interests--a different political economy of knowledge-based innovation that has at its core responsibility and public values rather than selfinterest and market values. Guston