Abstract (EN):
The Health Cluster Portugal (HCP) is a formal institution that aims to increase
competitiveness in the research, design, development, manufacture and trade of
innovative products and services in the health sector. The set up of this interface
was the result of a bottom-up initiative, within the framework of the Norte 2015
debate on policies designed to foster competitiveness based on innovation. It
was inspired in the triple helix model with the aim of engaging university,
industrial and state players, in an attempt to strengthen coordination and
interaction within and among these groups of players. Since it focuses primarily
on innovation in the health sector with both a horizontal approach (between
competing players) and a vertical one (from research to commercialization), the
knowledge base involved is not limited to the analytical, but includes also strong
input of synthetic knowledge. In this sense, the HCP must foster an ecology that
will stimulate, at the same time, the STI and DUI modes of innovation. The
HCP’s ecology of innovation is not restricted to the players directly involved in
the local buzz and in face-to-face learning, but considers also an increasingly
more global network of pipelines.
All in all, this paper aims to explore the origin, the form, the internal
organization and the external networks of the HCP, hoping to generalize its
potential in promoting innovation, in a knowledge-intensive and globally
competitive sector, as is the case of the life science industries.
Language:
English
Type (Professor's evaluation):
Scientific
Contact:
http://www.cityfutures2009.com/