Vorsprung durch Technium: Towards a system of innovation in South-west Wales

Vorsprung durch Technium: towards a system of innovation in south-west Wales, Regional Studies. Begun in 2001, Technium is a Welsh university-business interface project presently consisting of ten facilities. Seven of these are jointly managed by the Welsh Development Agency and Swansea University. Taken together with other, linked developments at the university, Technium is helping to generate a distinct sub-regional innovation system incorporating many features that researchers have identified as critical to successful localized collective learning and innovation. A provisional evaluation of costs and benefits suggests that recent criticism of the project is unfounded. With its initial dependence on European Union Structural Funds, the Technium model incorporates design elements that may be appropriate to other relatively deprived regions of the European Union.