The importance for companies in knowledge or technology intensive industries to take part in research partnerships has been thoroughly researched, and the gain of collaboration with external parties has been proven. One of these most influential collaboration types is the one between academia and industry, where the US Bayh-Dole Act provided a break-through policy change for the transfer, conversion and commercialization of knowledge and innovations. To counter this, the European Union has implemented a policy around a facilitating, user-centered milieu for innovation called Living Labs. In this article, the purpose is to identify potential collaboration barriers in the university-industry collaboration when implemented in this milieu. This is done by using a multiple case study where the respondents are seven individuals, from three Living Lab entities and two companies. The findings show that the inclusion of users give the setting its advantage, but also gives additional management needs, something that applies to all participants in the setting – the company representatives must have a diverse set of abilities, the researchers should be standalone and independent from the Living Labs management, the management must establish a shared physical context for all parties to interact within and there must be a very clear agreement between all parties what there are expecting from the collaboration regarding outcomes, process and structure.

Graphic Design is one part of the producer services sector of the modern metropolitan region. It is a sector that has experienced considerable development in terms of number of firms through demand created by the expansion of advertising and multi media. To date research has established that producer services, particularly finance related ones, agglomerate in the central city to take advantage of the agglomeration economies available in large metropolitan areas. This thesis argues that one of the key factors for the agglomeration of graphic design is the need for face-to-face communication with clients and other firms. There has been some work undertaken looking at the location of non-finance producer services, such as design, although these have been presented as snapshots at a point in time.This thesis extends this understanding through an analysis of agglomerations of graphic design firms over a twenty year time horizon. Using details of firm location in Melbourne every five years from 1981 to 2001 the thesis uses a geospatial analytical technique to identify agglomerations and explores the change in the size, location and density of agglomerations of firms. This research shows that the initial agglomeration of 1981 was still present by 2001 and had been joined by a number of new agglomerations ringing the Melbourne CBD while at the same time there has also been a dispersal of firms to the middle suburbs. In order to provide some insight in to the agglomeration of graphic design firms this research also examines the geography of two industries allied to graphic design: advertising and printing. This research shows that graphic designers and advertising agencies tend to locate in similar parts of inner Melbourne which may be due to the need for face-to-face contact between fims in these two industries. (For complete abstract open document)