Universities in a Metropolitan Environment: The Case of London

This paper addresses problems of assessing the external impact of university research in the context of a complex metropolitan region. It is a response to criticisms by Huggins (Entrep Reg Dev 20(2): 185-206, 2008) of the performance of higher education institutes (HEIs) in London. Huggins argued that, in the early 2000s, the involvement of London's HEIs in commercial knowledge transfer to the wider economy was lower than might be expected, especially in view of the city's national domination of financial venturing services. This paper argues that London supports one of the most diverse and open regional economies in Europe, offering wide potential for commercial HEI outreach for many forms of scientific, technological, biomedical, architectural, artistic, media, design, and other professional expertise. In recent years, many types of innovation in London have been described as 'hidden', unmeasured by conventional technology-based innovation indices [NESTA (Hidden innovation, 2007)]. By definition, therefore, these create special difficulties for assessing the outreach contribution of HEIs in the city.