Campus decision makers are increasingly expected to adopt ‘campus innovations’ (affecting real estate and different facilities), not only from the market and demand-led (external campus innovations), but also developed by the university's own scientists (internal campus innovations). The adoption of the latter can be driven and hindered by many unique factors that campus decision makers have not dealt with before. To provide insight into them, qualitative data were collected from 13 out of 14 Dutch research-intensive universities. The results indicate that internal campus innovations are driven by co-creation stimulation, collaborative partnership, transparency and accountability, and local development contribution. Their adoption, however, may be obstructed by barriers embedded in the interaction between campus decision makers and scientists, organizational university context, funds unavailability and innovations' supply-pushed characteristics. An increased understanding of these barriers and the practices to overcome them is crucial for universities' campus decision makers to actively engage in the adoption of internal campus innovations.@en

Universities find themselves in a unique position where sustainability visions are increasingly clear and innovations to promote sustainability are ever more abundant. On some campuses campus real estate management units (CREM units) receive infrequent requests from academics for the implementation of small experiments, their decisions are ad hoc and easily hosted, participation is limited to the researchers with little impact on the build environment of the university campus. However, as research groups and knowledge centres increasingly look for more realistic experimentation grounds for demonstrations of their innovative solutions, the decisions made by CREM units need to become more strategic. Finally the growing demand for practical solutions from a network of societal partners to achieve sustainability targets also emphasise the need for strategic response from CREM units. In this study, a qualitative research approach enabled a rich description of campus management’s experience in implementing campus innovation projects alongside researchers and external parties on campus. Through in-depth interviews innovation projects implemented by campus real estate management (CREM) units across 13 Dutch universities are categorized to provide a starting point for strategic management of innovation implementation on the Dutch campus. The scope of innovation implementation requests dealt with by CREM units vary in terms of a few main categories: 1. The time span they are on campus (from 6 months to legacy projects), 2. The innovation stage (from data gathering in the fundamental stages of a study to testing the business case of mature smart metering system), 3. The physical impact (from small experiments in traditional laboratories to large new buildings on campus and even software projects in the cloud); and 4. The role the CREM unit is expected to play (from participating or hosting to implementing or being a key network partner). We provide examples of projects throughout, linking the categorization and theoretical context to practical projects. A few drivers and many barriers to implementing innovation on campus was also identified. Mainly the strategic intent and organizational support of the innovation goals will enable and improve awareness and networking programmes or challenges that would enable innovators and implementers to find each other more often. Management of uncertainty and risk in a transparent manner and addressing synchronicity problems within current projects could also improve innovation implementation on campus. Many campuses report the need for (and in some cases the use of) research coordinator specifically focusing on creating and managing implementation projects on campus. A research coordinator would thus have the responsibility to facilitate networks of people where subject synergy may overlap with an overall understanding of both the specific research topics of a an academic research department and the. They would play a role in linking people with each other but also to facilitate discussions around campus innovation implementation, to consider the innovation readiness level (TRL), understand and describe the risks involved, align project, finance, time schedule and research goals between different parties. This report is the starting point for the development of a decision-making framework for CREM units on the implementation of innovation on campus. The potential benefits of decision making guidance would be: • Problem identification and formulation • Identification of clear goals • Illumination of key questions about scope and management (who are the stakeholders) • Application of analytical tools (assessing risk, actions, trade-offs and uncertainties) • Connecting authorities to the outcomes of their decisions • And transparency about the intentions We would like to thank all the participants in this study who provided their time and insight during the interviews to assist us in improving our understanding and strategic decision-making about innovation generation, adoption and integration on our Dutch campuses. We also welcome your continued participation through recommendations and knowledge sharing.   @en

Internationally, the ambition to achieve a sustainable built environment is becoming urgent. On the university campus, this vision, combined with unparalleled access to innovative technologies for sustainable development enables/urges universities to implement more innovative solutions more often. As a prime test location, the university campus is uniquely able to serve as a context for living labs, implementing and testing innovative technologies in a real-world environment. However, implementation of innovation on campus requires a clear vision, intentional action and transdisciplinary collaboration, while innovations themselves pose several challenges to the business-as-usual way of work. To explore the role of campus real estate managers in innovation implementation decisions on the university campus, a literature review and a qualitative study among campus managers of 13 Dutch universities were conducted. The research explored the innovation project types, risks, drivers and barriers and the real estate management responsibilities and decision criteria in innovation implementation projects. As one of the outputs of this research, a comprehensive categorization framework was developed. It clarifies campus managers’ decision-making dimensions for innovative sustainability project implementation on campus and highlights the sustainability objectives unique to universities. If implemented across universities, it could further strengthen the networked economy by identifying opportunities for cross-campus implementation of innovative projects for sustainability.@en

Campus as inter-disciplinary technological playground for sustainable technology experiments and implementation is a dream TU Delft strives for. However, innovation implementation on the university campus is nonetheless considered a risk due to the embedded uncertainty of any innovation. This uncertainty leads to several questions about the decisions to implement innovations on campus. Answering this question is the motivation behind this study, aimed at enabling effective implementation of innovation on our campus. We identified the decision making criteria used by a variety of employees who regularly face innovation implementation challenges on campus on campus. We used two decision support systems to identify and explain the relative importance of the decision making criteria. The first approach was executed by a TU Delft spin-off Councyl.ai. Councyl.ai’s decision support model was built to identify the decision-making criteria and then through a choice experiment identify the relative weight of those criteria. In a second approach, the PAS design and decision approach, developed by Prof. Monique Arkesteijn from TU Delft (2019), was used to develop the decision framework and relative importance of each criteria. This project has been successful in distilling the most important criteria used during implicit assessment of innovation projects on campus, a great achievement in itself. However these two approaches do not indicate the same relative weight of the decision-making criteria, suggesting that innovation projects are very diverse and the importance of criteria change along with the project description and context for implementation. This brings us one step closer to clearly communicating to innovators and amongst ourselves which decision-making criteria are implicitly taken into consideration for implementation of innovation on campus. It clarifies the steps that need to be taken to manage and mitigate risk, and increase the likelihood of innovators registering their interest in placing their innovations on campus, as well as the likelihood that campus managers will allocate the necessary resources to the project. We trust this report, in conjunction with the other research projects run at the Campus research team, will be beneficial in providing the necessary support for decision making about sustainable innovation on the university campus. Making the campus a reputable technological showroom of every aspirational clean energy, climate adaptive and circular innovation on the TU Delft campus and beyond. @en