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A triple helix regime typically begins when an existing innovation regime, whether a single helix, based on industry, or a double helix of government-industry falls into a crisis that cannot be resolved within the existing framework. Involving new actors, not traditionally directly involved in innovation like the university, restructuring others to perform new roles and creating new relationships appear to be the path to a solution. Innovation is transformed from a set of linear and reverse linear processes within industry, extending from research to the market and vice versa, to a non-linear process in the transition to a knowledge-based society. Beyond the development of new products, innovation is the creation of new configurations among the institutional spheres. University-industry-government interactions are increasingly the basis of economic and social development strategy in both advanced industrial and developing societies. The transition to a "triple helix" characterized by interdependence among relatively autonomous institutional spheres, takes place from divergent starting points of "statist" and "laissez-faire" regimes.

The first and second academic revolutions gradually transformed universities into organizations that are responsible not only for teaching, but also for conducting research and contributing to regional development through multiple ways. The chapter provides a comprehensive discussion of the entrepreneurial turn at universities. In this vein it introduces the impetuses behind academic entrepreneurship, and also discusses the related potential drawbacks of it that caused concerns among many stakeholders. The role of polyvalent knowledge in the academic entrepreneurial processes is also introduced. Examples of prominent scientists’ and universities’ involvement in technology transfer process, the demonstration of the role of government in the rediscovery of university-industry connections, respectively the discussion of the entrepreneurial model that took hold in academia all support better understanding of the rise of entrepreneurial processes in universities.

The Triple Helix Model has been proposed as a tool to describe and understand the complex field of University–Industry–Government (U–I–G) interactions. This chapter introduces its conceptual history as well as its origins in the nexus of Silicon Valley and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and compares it to Innovation Systems Theory. The chapter then discusses both the role of the model in current knowledge societies and the particular circumstances of Silicon Valley in its development. Lastly, the authors reflect on the generalizability of the model and highlight its advantages.