Exports, university-industry linkages, and innovation challenges in Bangalore, India

Anthony P. D'Costa

"The success of the Indian software industry is now internationally recognized. Consequently, scholars, policymakers, and industry officials everywhere generally anticipate the increasing competitiveness of India in high technology activities. Using a structural framework, the author argues that Bangalore's (and India's) information technology (IT) industry is predicated on an Indian business model which does not encourage thick institutional linkages such as those encapsulated by the triple helix model. Under this institutional arrangement there is cross-fertilization of new ideas and new modes of institutional interaction between industry, academia, and government. Though there are several hundred IT businesses in a milieu of numerous engineering and science colleges and high-end public sector research institutes, the supposed thick institutional architecture is in reality quite...