Collaborate to Innovate: How businesses can work with universities to generate knowledge and drive innovation

Universities and businesses already collaborate across a number of strategically important areas, particularly in areas such as knowledge-intensive economic growth. Muthu de Silva argues that it is important that universities and businesses learn from successful collaborations and that government supports and nurtures these interactions

Innovation intermediaries and collaboration: Knowledge–based practices and internal value creation

This paper analyses how knowledge-based practices adopted by innovation intermediaries enable them to generate value for themselves when collaborating with their clients. While the literature focuses on value creation for their client organisations, little is known about how innovation intermediaries create internal value even though this is essential for ensuring their long-term survival and sustaining their key facilitating role in the innovation system. This understudied issue is explored using empirical evidence from a sub-set of innovation intermediaries, Research and Technology Organisations (RTOs). The results indicate that by capitalising on existing knowledge vested in employees and collaborators as well as understanding and shaping the knowledge base of the innovation ecosystem, innovation intermediaries generate internal value from their involvement in collaborative innovation, which range from different financial to non-financial types of value. Implications for intermediaries, their collaborators and for policymakers are then discussed

Academic entrepreneurship and normal academic duties in a resource constrained environment: symbiosis or rivalry?

The engagement of universities in entrepreneurial activities, in addition to their traditional roles of teaching and research, has received mixed responses; while some view this as a positive change with a myriad of benefits to universities, business and the wider economy others argue that this causes negative impacts on traditional university roles. Whilst most of these studies are conducted in relatively resource rich developed countries, there is a lack of research carried out in resource constrained environments. Hence, this study aims to fill this gap in our knowledge by investigating how academic entrepreneurship in a resource constrained environment affects normal academic duties. Sequential mixed methods are adopted with an online survey and follow up in-depth interviews. Our study reveals that academic entrepreneurial engagement is essential to conduct teaching and research in a resource constrained environment since it is the only option for academics to overcome resource barriers. Academic entrepreneurs manage their engagements in multiple activities due to the symbiotic relationship between them and other academics who work closely with them. Whilst academic entrepreneurs are the initiators or leaders who secure entrepreneurial opportunities, other academics support them to capitalise on these opportunities. It is the resource scarcities that create this symbiotic interdependency between academic entrepreneurs and other academics. Implications and future research avenues are highlighted

Academics engaging in knowledge transfer and co-creation : Push causation and pull effectuation?

Although academics are increasingly engaging with businesses, some fundamental aspects of this phenomenon (i.e., their motivations, decision-making approaches, and the interplay between the two) remain understudied. We therefore conducted a qualitative inductive study comprising 68 interviews with academics who had engaged in two forms of activities—knowledge transfer and co-creation. Whereas the entrepreneurship literature offers a resource-based argument, we made an original contribution to the literature by introducing an engagement-based argument in order to offer a more accurate prediction of the motivations and decision-making approaches of academics engaged in knowledge transfer and co-creation activities. We found that when the resource- and engagement-based arguments offer different predictions of the interplay between the motivations and decision-making approaches adopted, the cognitive proximity between academics and business researchers, which reflects whether the partners are from the same/different disciplines, resolves the puzzle. We captured these situational contingencies by developing six propositions that indicate how the engagement- and resource-based arguments jointly offer a more comprehensive explanation of the interplay. We discuss the implications of our findings with regard to how universities could offer customized training, rewards, and support structures based on the four types of interplay between the motivation and decision-making approaches.© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Why do we need science-based co-creation?

For many years the transfer, exchange and collaboration of knowledge and technology between academia and industry have been discussed as an important means of generating commercial value. The underlying rationale for such collaborations is that knowledge and technology from academia lead to firms’ competitive advantage. What has received less attention in the literature, so far, is a science-based collaborative approach for addressing societal challenges. In particular, we focus on collaborations among different actors - ranging from academics, businesses, policy makers, intermediaries and society - who devote shared resources, competences and capabilities in developing unique solutions to economic and societal challenges. The specific domain of a such process - that demands thinking beyond the knowledge transfer or creation expected to produce business value - is framed as “co-creation”. This paper outlines a conceptual framework by capturing the heterogeneity of science-based co-creation and its determinants. In the paper, the concept of co-creation is positioned in the various strands of innovation literature which refer to collaboration across different domains, highlighting the uniqueness of co-creation. We suggest focussing on a distinctive character of co-creation: the production of both business value and social values that emerges with different forms of innovation, reach and prominence. While business value has its own metric in a monetary scale, when society is considered, metrics should refer to the many different dimensions that have been impacted on, leading to many social values (in plural). The paper highlights research gaps to further our knowledge on co-creation and suggests policy implications to support effective mutual interactions across science, technology and society

Entrepreneurial co-creation: societal impact through open innovation

New open innovation initiatives such as accelerators, living labs, social innovation labs and open labs, involve for-profit and not-for-profit actors working closely together to co-create both business value and societal impacts. However, there is a lack of theoretical underpinning to understand how and why co-creation by actors generate different types of social value in the concurrent pursuit of business and social value. Adopting an inductive case study approach, we find that different types of entrepreneurs who co-exploit co-identified opportunities for co-creation, enables them to generate potentially competing social and business values. We develop four propositions relating to how and why profit orientation and key resource contributions of entrepreneurs co-identifying an opportunity to co-create decide the nature of social value generated. We discuss avenues for future research and practical implications, underlying the importance of developing entrepreneurialism as ways to generate different social impacts through open innovation approaches such as co-creation

Unlocking co-creation for green innovation: an exploration of the diverse contributions of universities

In the context of the green transition, universities have much to offer in joint green innovation projects with business, government and citizens. As hubs of diverse expertise, universities are uniquely placed to build interdisciplinary teams and bridge gaps between society and industry. Their regional ties also enable them to engage with the local ecosystem. This paper draws from ten international case studies of university partnerships with industry and society in green mobility, green energy and green products, services and processes. The comparative evidence gathered from interviews with representatives from these initiatives examines universities’ practices for green co-creation. Additionally, the paper outlines policy recommendations crucial to supporting these initiatives, essential for the global success of sustainable development efforts

Unlocking co-creation for green innovation: 10 international case studies

Document associated with policy paper titled "Unlocking co-creation for green innovation : an exploration of the diverse contributions of universities." OECD Science, Technology and Industry Policy Papers #163, ISSN 2307-495

The microlevel actions undertaken by owner-managers in improving the sustainability practices of cultural and creative small and medium enterprises: a United Kingdom-Italy comparison

This article discusses microlevel actions undertaken by owner-managers, and how such actions affect stakeholders in enhancing the sustainability of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), the knowledge on which is lacking in the extant literature. The paper, by adopting an inductive analytical approach, draws key insights from the literature on microfoundations and sustainability and evidence from representatives of 5 Cultural and Creative Industry SMEs in Italy and of 5 in the United Kingdom. The findings suggest that owner-managers play a crucial role when engaging in sustainability activities jointly with employees and other stakeholders, through which individual-level actions enhance collective organizational-level sustainability practices. The U.K. and Italian cases highlight 2 contrasting approaches to dealing with sustainability; thus, the paper contributes to the emerging literature on SME microfoundations and sustainability

Critical appraisal of methodological quality of Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis in Paediatric Dentistry journals

Objective: To systematically assess the methodological quality of Systematic Reviews (SRs) and Meta-Analyses (MA) published in Paediatric Dentistry journals and to analyse the relationship between the authors, journals, country, review topic, and the year of publication to the methodological quality of SRs and MA.Design: Paediatric Dentistry journals ranked in the top five of the h5 index of Google Scholar Metrics were selected. SRs with MA were searched independently by two reviewers using PubMed and Scopus databases until December 2017. Methodological quality was assessed using A Measurement Tool to Assess Systematic Reviews (AMSTAR) tool. Statistical significance was set at P Results: Finally, 24 SRs with MA were included. The overall AMSTAR score of SRs and MA published in paediatric dentistry journals was 7.08 ± 2.41. No statistically significant differences were found between the country, journal or focus of study to the quality of SRs except the number of authors and the year of publication (P Conclusions: The quality of SRs and MA in leading Paediatric Dentistry journaSavels were evaluated with AMSTAR tool and areas where quality could be improved were identified.</p