Understanding innovation spaces: a topic modelling approach

Actors within the triple helix model have increasingly recognised innovation spaces as highly conducive environments for expediting innovative practices. However, the landscape of innovation spaces manifests in diverse typologies, encompassing Makerspaces, Hackerspaces, FabLabs, Innovation Labs, Innovation Centres, Idea Labs, Social Innovation Labs, and STEAM Labs. Hence, we seek to address the question, what do these innovation spaces have in common? Leveraging web scraping, semantic analysis, and topic modelling techniques, we scrutinise the primary content extracted from 181 distinct innovation space websites. These digital repositories harbour valuable information delineating their offerings, communication channels, resources, and objectives, thereby facilitating a comprehensive understanding of their organisational framework and configuration. Our analysis unveils 13 distinct thematic clusters derived from the aggregated information across these innovation space websites. These thematic clusters, exhibiting notable similarities, are categorised into three overarching macro-themes: 1) emphasis on educational initiatives; 2) utilisation and provision of digital manufacturing resources; 3) robust community building strategies.