Special issue

The challenges of innovation and regional development are putting substantial pressure on efforts to shape the future of industry–higher education cooperation mechanisms and frameworks. Regional growth, the primary aim of traditional knowledge transfer partnerships, in which industries outsource their research and development to universities and research centres, is now supplemented by other equally pressing priorities. The complexity of the industrial context and the diversification of enterprise size, operation and policy fluctuation make the challenge of university–industry collaboration ever more intricate, with the envisioned outcomes of innovation and long-term development and growth in both regional and national contexts.

Against this changing background, substantial work has been done in an effort to understand how such partnerships can be properly managed in today’s decentralized multi-stakeholder complex system, in which the market drivers (industry) are deemed to push co-creation for growth. One example of that work is the pioneering Triple Helix model (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, 2000), which asserts the need for the proper integration of academia, industry and policy to ensure market-oriented and policy-compliant innovation and growth. The Triple Helix has become a widely accepted framework that has often been studied in relation to regional innovation systems and clusters, demonstrating the long-term benefits of innovation outburst and regional development (Todeva and Ketikidis, 2017). The model also addresses the role of entrepreneurialism in universities and knowledge and technology transfer centres (Ketikidis et al., 2012). Taking into account policy developments and societal pressures, the Triple Helix model has been extended to include a fourth pillar – the voice of society – envisaging more socially friendly development that reflects the true needs of society and the end-consumers of innovation. Thus, the Quadruple Helix Model has been introduced (Leydesdorff, 2012; Todeva, 2015). Finally, with a view to furthering the global goals of sustainable development (and environmental sustainability overall), the Quintuple Helix has emerged (Carayannis et al., 2012), incorporating the ‘environment’ as the fifth pillar in a multi-stakeholder co-creation framework, designed to enable goal and incentive alignment for all stakeholders and proper peer-moderation of innovation development and transition to the market. The Quintuple Helix looks to the successful implementation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and is currently being piloted and applied by researchers worldwide (Solomon and Ketikidis, 2018).

Despite the existence of such theoretical collaboration models, however, core operational challenges persist, constraining the stakeholders involved from fully engaging in the collaborative process. With this in mind, we aim in this special issue of Industry and Higher Education to investigate some of the most prominent challenges faced by stakeholders in their knowledge and technology transfer co-creation (within a multi-stakeholder framework). The selected articles are based on presentations at the International Conference for Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Regional Development held in Thessaloniki, Greece, on 31 August and 1 September 2017. All have been refereed and substantially revised and extended for publication in this issue. The articles showcase successful approaches to multi-stakeholder co-creation and propose solutions to the following operational challenges in university–industry collaboration.

First, based on the literature and the demands of practice, there is a critical need to understand how universities design, implement and operationalize their technology transfer offices (TTOs) in order to ensure proper outreach to the ‘market’ (including all types of stakeholders, as mentioned above). Now, most universities have a TTO or some type of industry engagement office, but there is a need to ascertain the key features that make a TTO successful and give it maximum impact.

Second, entrepreneurship education (as opposed to engagement with industry) is of increasing importance for both students and academic staff. With a large variety of such educational programmes, how can we ensure that they will meet their objectives? What is the role of all the relevant stakeholders in shaping the curricula?

Third, how can we better foster university–industry collaboration that focuses on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which are the backbone of the European market? How can universities develop programmes that will enable a platform for SMEs to pilot open innovation and thus enable faster knowledge flows and regional growth? Further, how would such a test bed enable a knowledge transfer maturity level that would lead to long-term sustainability?

Fourth, the debate about start-up incubators reflects a high reliance on independent incubators and technology parks within innovation centres, where start-ups receive coaching, acceleration and training to access finance and investment. Nevertheless, the role of the university in this context could be substantially boosted by leveraging the potential of university-hosted start-up incubators. While many universities offer such services worldwide, few are very successful in the endeavour. The key challenge is to ascertain how the engagement of all stakeholders can be secured in university-led incubators (with reference to the Quadruple and Quintuple Helix models), so that this value co-production can be enabled.

Fifth, as universities are tending to become more entrepreneurial in terms of both the services they offer and the entrepreneurial nature of their academic staff, barriers related to intellectual property (IP) and capital policies continue to block many potentially successful ideas. With a true multi-stakeholder approach, such constraints could be mitigated to enable true entrepreneurialism in universities. IP rights and settlements have been and will continue to be sensitive topics with regard to university-led spin-offs and require careful analysis and approaches.

Finally, among other key challenges, for both research and practice, there is evidence of limited resources (finance, capital and infrastructure), a lack of adequate policies, incentive misalignment, resistance to change and other specific issues that are discussed in this special issue. The role of university–industry collaboration (and beyond – collaboration that includes all stakeholders in innovation and growth) is one of the most prominent challenges for 21st-century societies. As new forms of governance emerge, together with new business models and service types, the nature of technology transfer will be in a state of constant change, which will demand flexibility and adaptation in the dynamic process that sustains multi-stakeholder collaboration. The leading innovators from any sector must identify novel ways to ensure sustainable knowledge and technology transfer within their ecosystem.

Bearing these core challenges in mind, we hope that readers will find the papers in this special issue useful and informative for their endeavours and that the case studies presented will offer valuable pointers to best practice.