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Science parks as knowledge organizations -the 'ba' in action? AbstractRecent studies of the impact of science parks have questioned traditional assumptions about the effect of such parks on innovation and economic growth.Most studies tend to measure this effect by rather traditional measures, such as the revenue or the survival rate of new firms, without taking into account the fact that knowledge is of growing importance in the new economy. If we shift our focus to the discussions that are going on within organization theory we see that this field has specialized itself in relation to the processes of creating knowledge, and of managing it, organizing it, sharing it, transferring it, etc. The evaluation of science parks has to come to grips with the changed role of knowledge in the creation of economic growth. With the help of Nonaka's concept of ba, this paper discusses whether and how traditionally organized science parks can become central actors in the new regime of knowledge production or whether they must be viewed as an outdated institution, left over from industrial society.

The paper discusses research leadership in public universities under change and the role of entrepreneurial strategies in research. Research leadership function today in situations where the New Public Management movement one the one hand have introduced management by accountability and control in the university while on the other hand open boundaries to other knowledge organizations, arenas and networks, and creation of resources are becoming more important than ever. Hence, an entrepreneurial strategy is more important than traditional managerial skills in order to produce new knowledge centres. By analysing two cases on the construction of new research groups, we will introduce new perspectives on research leadership, where dilemmas, uncertainty and complex relations to other managerial systems in the universities are in the forefront. The paper presents an important contribution to the understanding of a special form of creating new knowledge production in the university by means of organizational entrepreneurship.

Research evaluation is an activity undergoing change. The traditional peer review system with its focus on scientific content and methodology has long been the backbone of research evaluation, but over the last three decades other criteria and considerations have also been integrated into the evaluation of science. This paper investigates how recent societal developments -epitomised by the concept of the Agora -influence research evaluations and how we perceive them. Are they still grounded in a scientific rationale, or are they more to be understood as a result of a social rationale?

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