Cross-sector Collaborative Innovation

Abstract

In the past decades, universities’ involvement in socio-economic development, which goes along with their teaching and researching activities, has defined a new role for them in society’s ecosystem. This new role is often referred with the term of “entrepreneurial” university, whose objectives are positive societal, economic and environmental impacts. In order to fulfil such objectives, entrepreneurial universities might engage in cross-sector collaborations with external organisations. Despite the great contributions that cross-sector collaboration can give to the partners involved, the outcome is mostly unfocussed and rarely embedded. This master thesis explores the outcome embedding in the cross-sector collaboration between entrepreneurial universities and the private sector. To this end, we provide the case of the collaboration between KLM and four Dutch entrepreneurial research and education institutions. We aim to uncover hindering and enabling factors to the outcome embedding in order to design a new type of cross-sector collaboration, design it together, or else DIT. DIT is a new cross-sector collaboration that encourages the outcome embedding, moving from being inspired by to the actual implementation of the cross-sector collaboration. In order to fulfil this goal, this study employs a research through design methodology. This approach is a generative process, where cyclic loops of iterations and evaluations with stakeholders tend to the research goal. The solution is a cross-sector boundary group, The DIT Board, a cross-sector boundary object, The DIT Platform and a cross-sector boundary experience, The DIT Program. The DIT cross-sector collaboration overcomes the obstacles to the outcome embedding, creating an interaction that is able to transcend the different organisation cultures of the partners involved. This study can inspire practitioners and future research on the problem of unsuccessful cross-sector collaborations, between entrepreneurial universities and external organisations, with more emphasis on the value of embedding and translating the outcomes.