Aim: The present study aims to explore the issue of innovation and public-private partnership by presenting an analysis of the economic and non-economic effects produced by the collaboration between an Italian Social Cooperative and the academic sector. The main questions addressed by the study are: does the collaboration with the university sector boost the economic growth of social enterprises, both in their start up phase and afterwards? Does the collaboration with the university sector promote social innovation?Methods: The authors analyzed: (1) number of agreements (cumulative data) and number of interns, PhD students, and master students operating at the target Social Cooperative per year; (2) number of agreements (cumulative data) and number of internships per year for the target Social Cooperative and 4 other organizations replicating its model; (3) annual income from privates (in euros) per year for each organization; (4) awards and recognitions gained by the target Social Cooperative throughout the years. Results: Besides the existing differences among the observed organizations, data seem to confirm that the relationship with the university sector does not promote, at least in the initial phase, any important outcome in terms of income growth. Moreover, despite the description and amount of grants might not represent an "objective" measure of social innovation, it is undeniable that the target Cooperative shows a propensity to social innovation which is recognized by third parties too. Discussion: Although the data seem to disincentive, at least in the start up phase, the assumption that the university represents an economic or marketing boost, future studies might investigate other strategies to measure the qualitative and quantitative relationship between private companies and universities, in order to find different correlations with the social innovation issue and other economic and financial variables
