Women Resource Centres—A Creative Knowledge Environment of Quadruple Helix

Abstract

Creative behaviour has been claimed to be a vital ingredient for the inventions and innovations that are indispensable for the dawning knowledge society. The causality between creativity, knowledge development and innovation ascribes creative knowledge environments an important role as work settings in which people produce new knowledge. The Creative Knowledge Environment approach reaches beyond the Triple Helix model—promoted in innovation policy and research—in its potential to acknowledge creative environments outside academia, industry and government. This is a relevant contribution since the public funding of Triple Helix constellations has been criticised for paradoxically consolidating old structures rather than opening up for creative change. In this article, the model of Women Resource Centres (WRCs)—developed in Sweden and internationalized throughout Europe—serves as an example of how creativity in the organization of joint action networks can make new knowledge and innovation prosper. These centres were initiated in order to promote gender equality in regional development policy, enhancing women’s realization of business ideas and innovations. The model of Women Resource Centres illustrates the need for further development of predominant models for promoting innovation. Suggested concepts such as Creative Knowledge Environments and Quadruple Helix have the potential to increase the diversity of actors and areas being acknowledged as important in the expanding knowledge economy, by including the civil society and creative industries. However, the example of WRCs exposes an aspect of creativity and innovation that is not properly addressed in the suggested models, namely the aspect of gender.