Governing Difference as an Innovation Resource: A Cross-Cultural Review Essay on Self-Different Fractals and Innovation

Abstract

David F. J. Campbell and Elias G. Carayannis’ Self-Different Fractals and Innovation: Academic Firm and the Entrepreneurial University in Epistemic Governance is a compact yet conceptually demanding book. It brings together debates on the entrepreneurial university, the academic firm and epistemic governance through the notion of ‘self-different fractals’. This review essay reads the book from the perspective of higher education and innovation studies, while extending the discussion through a Chinese philosophical lens. The book’s main contribution is not another model of innovation, but a shift in attention from actor coordination to the governance of epistemic and institutional difference. It asks how innovation systems can work with differences among universities, firms, governments, society and the natural environment, rather than treating such differences as problems to be eliminated. The review argues that the book is most valuable as a conceptual provocation. It reopens a difficult question for higher education and innovation research: how can systems preserve difference as a source of creativity without allowing it to become fragmentation, conflict or empty coordination?