Targeting Academic Engagement in Open Innovation: Tools, Effects and Challenges for University Management

Abstract

Besides commercialization, university knowledge is commonly transferred through different interactions constituting the so called academic engagement. Very little attention has been paid to professionalizing these various interactions compared to the linear commercialization funnel. In this paper, we conducted a qualitative case study of the innovation support organization at Uppsala University, Sweden, analysing the following: Which mechanisms and tools the university management does apply in order to create targeted open innovation interactions and which effects and challenges emerge when applying these tools? We found that staff with experience of both academia and industry is important for enabling open innovation interactions to evolve and that tools can be used to concretize specific and deeper interactions. However, six challenges was also identified: (1) the intermittent nature of university-industry interactions; (2) lack of codified ways to trace effects; (3) extensive and time consuming preparatory work; (4) the extra resources and low conversion rates in engaging academically unrelated small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs); (5) high costs of recruiting staff with double competence and running the studied tools; and (6) the interdependencies which makes the system sensitive. Our results indicate that the tools used help the university to follow a mode 3 of knowledge creation. The study addressed the research gap regarding organizational support in academic engagement by indicating which tools can be used by the university management to target and focus industryacademia interactions, their effects and associated challenges. A lot of the effects still need to be codified, and more research is needed to understand their impact over time.

University-industry knowledge transfer - unpacking the “black box”: an introduction

“…These new trends open new "windows of opportunity" for universities, as potential partners for firms (and industry). Greater collaboration in U-I relations can transform into greater economic development (Casaramona, Sapia, & Soraci, 2015), either through instruments capable of generating technological and knowledge spillovers (Audretsch & Link, 2019;Ferreira, Dana, & Ratten, 2017;) to accurate market failures in the field of innovation (Jonsson, Baraltu, Larsson, Forsberg, & Severinsson, 2015;Laine, Leino, & Pulkkinen, 2015), and to obtain a superior return on R&D investments or able of enhancing the emergence of a greater number of start-ups, the increase in the number of patents and licences, joint R&D projects (Cohen, Nelson, & Walsh, 2002), or joint scientific publications.…”

Universities and open innovation: the determinants of network centrality

“…The aim of this paper is to explore the role of universities as 'open innovators' in terms of the extent to which they hold prominent positions within particular network architectures, bridging and brokering connections between other actors, and being strategically positioned at the centre of these architectures (Burt 2005;Jonsson et al 2015). Therefore, the objective of the paper is to argue that the concept of open innovation should be increasingly integrated into frameworks examining the role of universities as entrepreneurial actors (Lawton Smith et al 2014).…”

Bridging the chasm? Exploring the effect of the University Context on Knowledge Exchange

“…Universities' interactive processes are particularly often complex and the knowledge forms and approaches varied (Jonsson et al, 2015). The variety of knowledge partners encountered by universities is further compounded by diverging cultures, motives standards and values (Plewa et al, 2013, Nooteboom, 2002 which requires strategizing to navigate.…”

“…The variety of knowledge partners encountered by universities is further compounded by diverging cultures, motives standards and values (Plewa et al, 2013, Nooteboom, 2002 which requires strategizing to navigate. Particularly in the case of University-Industry collaboration, researchers and industrialists are aligned to different incentive structures, organizational environments and cultures (Bruneel et al, 2010, Jonsson et al, 2015. Bruneel et al (2010) further explain the need to focus on the organizational provisions designed to enhance the work of research communities -this is especially relevant because while the number of projects traversing multi-disciplinary partners have markedly increased, no corresponding understanding of such new collaborative models have been realised to enhance management of the collaborations (Corley et al, 2006, Muscio andVallanti, 2014).…”