Philippe Aghion, Mathias Dewatripont, and Jeremy C. Stein developed a model that clarifies the respective advantages and disadvantages of academic and private-sector research. The fundamental tradeoff between academia and the private sector is one of creative control versus focus.

.. [are] ‘those innovations that generate market and/or technological discontinuities. These kinds of innovations affect the abilities of incumbent firms to successfully adapt and respond, as well as to sustain their prior market and technological positions. The literature generally categorises discontinuous innovation as either radical or architectural in nature.

These crucial relationships between research effort and innovation performance may be analysed by an input-output linear model developed by Griliches (1979, 1984). Input is the new technological knowledge generated by R&D in industries and universities and output is the patented innovations. The model is

‘The Triple Helix is a spiral model of innovation that captures multiple reciprocal relationships at different points in the process of knowledge capitalization’. The model denotes the ‘university-industry-government’ relationship as a complex of interdependent institutional spheres,