The Synergy and Cycle Values in Regional Innovation Systems: The Case of Norway

Abstract

The innovation capacity of a system can be measured as the synergy in interactions among its parts. Synergy can be considered as a consequence of negative entropies among three parts of the system. We analyze the development of synergy value in the Norwegian innovation system in terms of mutual information among geographical, sectorial, and size distributions of firms. We use three different techniques for the evaluation of the evolution of synergy over time: rescaled range analysis, DFT, and geographical synergy decomposition. The data was provided by Statistics Norway for all Norwegian firms registered in the database between 2002 and 2014. The results suggest that the synergy at the level of both the country and its seven regions show non-chaotic oscillatory behavior which resonates in a set of natural frequencies. The finding of a set of frequencies implies a complex Triple-Helix structure, composed of many elementary triple helices, which can be theorized in terms of a fractal TH manifold.