Book Review: Self-Different Fractals and Innovation. Academic Firm and The Entrepreneurial University in Epistemic Governance
Campbell, David F. J. / Elias G. Carayannis (2026)
Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group
Book review written by Jun Kajee
Innovation theory has long been preoccupied with dizzying diagrams, acronyms, and predictive models. The Triple, Quadruple, and Quintuple Helix frameworks promise neat categorizations of universities, firms, government, and society—but often leave policymakers wondering what to do with all this abstraction. David F. J. Campbell and Elias G. Carayannis offer a different ambition. They ask not how innovation happens, but how it can be governed—and in doing so, they situate the question in the philosophical realm.
At the center of their argument is the idea of self-different fractals. Whereas traditional fractals are “self-similar” across scales, the authors insist that innovation systems are self-different: repeated, but never identical. This is more than a metaphor. It reframes innovation as a system of structured diversity, where universities, firms, and networks of governance interact recursively across local, national, and global levels. This approach captures a reality that most linear models miss: innovation is messy, dynamic, and heterogeneously scaled.
To give this abstraction institutional life, the authors juxtapose the entrepreneurial university and the academic firm. The former extends universities beyond teaching and research into societal engagement; the latter imports academic logic—research autonomy, publication culture, epistemic incentives—into corporate environments. The two together form a thesis-antithesis pair, whose interplay produces the need for epistemic governance. This is one of the most significant contributions of the book. Governance is no longer merely administrative or procedural; it is about designing systems that can manage difference itself, making diversity productive rather than chaotic.
The conceptual rigor is matched by normative ambition. The authors refer to these institutions in relation to knowledge democracies, Industry 5.0, and ecological sustainability. Innovation is no longer a self-contained economic process; it is enmeshed with societal well-being, environmental responsibility, and democratic values—thereby extending the Helix frameworks into normative territory without a loss of analytical utility.
Of course, ambition carries its own risks. The notion of self-different fractals is compelling, but operationalization remains unclear. How can policymakers and administrators actually design institutions that preserve epistemic difference while ensuring coordinated outcomes? Similarly, the academic firm is described in considerable depth, yet empirical examples are scarce, leaving readers to imagine how such structures work in practice. These are not flaws, exactly; they are invitations for the next wave of research to test, refine, and implement the concepts.
What makes the work particularly satisfying is the balance it strikes between philosophical depth and institutional relevance. The authors avoid both the jargon-heavy abstraction of philosophy-for-its-own-sake and the managerial simplification of policy manuals. The writing leans dense in places, but it is anchored by interpretive clarity and by repeated engagement with concrete institutional forms. A reader finishes the book with a sense not only of what the key arguments are but also why they matter for higher education governance, innovation policy, and the broader knowledge economy.
In short, readers are challenged to rethink the very foundations of how knowledge, innovation, and governance interrelate. The book is demanding but ultimately rewarding: it invites scholars and policymakers alike to treat epistemic diversity as a resource, not a problem. Whether the world is ready to implement fractal-informed governance remains an open question—but the vision is certainly worth grappling with.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Jun Kajee is a
lecturer at Southern Utah University, a nonresident research fellow at the
Korea Institute for Maritime Strategy, and a researcher for the SeaLight
maritime transparency initiative at Stanford University’s Gordian Knot Center
for National Security Innovation.