The "endless perspective" to university - industry - government relations

Since the emergence of the Triple Helix, expansions to Quadruple, Quintuple, N-tuple helices, and models decomposing higher-order helices into multiple interrelated triple helices, or two-layer triple helices have been proposed. Albeit presenting alternative conceptual frameworks these different Helix models seem unsuited to address internal boundaries to the institutional spheres of the university, industry, and government. Addressing this circumstance, the present article pursues the research purpose of conceptualizing a perspective that opens the possibility of analysis to occur between but also within the boundaries of the institutional spheres. To that effect it advocates the application of different reference frames (scopes) to capture the dynamics that empirically emerge from the system under research. The novelty of this study is that it expands the existing theory by proposing that adding "scopes" (instead of introducing new helices) can increase the analytical potential of the Triple Helix.