Combining Universities’ third mission and place based industrial development

This short note is aimed at proposing a synthetic view of the combination of two important contemporary tendencies in both post-industrialized and emerging industrialized places and nations. They are: 1. The increasing diffusion of the so-called third mission of universities, that is the valorization of the results of academic research through direct knowledge transfer for innovation; 2. The expanding ‘intrusion' of science-based knowledge in worlds of production, included those characterized by specialized SMEs clusters embedded in compact centres of industry, like industrial districts and urban poles of innovation. The combination is more or less implicitly subsumed within approaches entitled at the triple helix and at the regional innovation system. We would rather refer to a more direct approach and to some applications. That is: 3. The model of the University centric industrial district (UCID); 4. Some suggestions from current third mission's strategies at the universities of the Tuscany region (Italy) and the prospects of their relation with a regional territory rich (not only of art and history but also) of place based SMEs clusters.