This book critically examines the phenomenon and the consequences of the increasing inter-dependence between industry, universities and national laboratories. It explores the contrasts and similarities between the patterns of formal and informal links in a technologically dynamic industry (electronic components) with those in a traditional industry (flow measurement) in the UK, France and Belgium. It uses evidence from interviews with firms, academics and industry organisations in the three countries to identify the major factors which regulate links.

HELEN LAWTON SMITH is Reader in Local Economic Development, Centre for Local Economic Development at Coventry University and Senior Research Associate, School of Geography. She is also Director of Science Policy Studies of the Regulatory Policy Research Centre (RPRC) at Hertford College, Oxford University. She is the co-editor (with Nick Woodward) of Energy and the Environment.

ERIK SWYNGEDOUW is University Reader in Economic Geography at Oxford University and Fellow of St Peter's College. His research interests are political-economy and political-ecology and the dynamics of socio-economic change.