The Evaluation of Universities’ Third Mission and Intellectual Capital: Theoretical Analysis and Application to Italy

Life Science 2.0: reframing the life science sector for 'the benefit on mankind'

The COVID-19 pandemic put the life science sector to the test. Vaccines were developed at unprecedented speed, benefiting from decades of fundamental research and now honoured by a Nobel Prize. However, we saw that the fruits of science were inequitably distributed. Most low- and middle-income countries were left behind, deepening the inequalities that the Sustainable Development Goals were set to reduce. We argue that the life science sector must reinvent itself to be better and more equitably prepared for the next health crisis and to ensure fair access to health across current and future generations. Our recommendations include global governance, national strategies and the role of universities and corporations. Improved and more equitable health care should be centre stage for global health action and a core mission of a reframed Life Science sector - what we call Life Science 2.0.Paper ContextMain findings: During the COVID-19 pandemic the Life Science sector stepped up to the challenge, but vaccines and medicines were not equitably distributed.Added knowledge: Obstacles were identified that hindered global access to medical innovations.Global health impact for policy and action: Global and national governance, universities and the private sector should join forces to create a Life Science sector (Life Science 2.0) that affords equitable access to medical advances across geographical and generational boundaries and socio-economic strata.

Productive interactions in digital training partnerships: Lessons learned for regional development and university societal impact assessment

In development, social, and management theories, universities have gained increasing relevance as engines of growth and innovation. Alongside companies, universities engage in a collaborative exploration for a shared knowledge base that does not pursue immediate exploitation. Drawing on research evaluation and the regional and entrepreneurial studies on University-Industry Collaborations (UICs) and knowledge ecosystems, this article assesses the digital training partnerships the University of Naples in Italy has established with some global technology and advanced manufacturing companies. By examining their innovative performance, the case study evaluation explores university-business 'productive interactions,' highlighting such critical issues as the management and risks of co-innovation, the attraction of talents, and the development of human capital in a peripheral and moderate innovative region. The article critically discusses the regional development outcomes and the evaluation designs to assess the societal impact of university research and education.

A micro credential for interoperability

In the midst of a global pandemic the need for health and social care providers to commit to, and deliver on, integrated patient-centered care services has been accelerated. Globally, health and social care programme administrators are turning to digital devices and applications to provide supporting infrastructure which can offer safe access to health information at the point of care. Digitalisation is increasingly considered a key requirement to support diagnostics and therapeutic care services in health care delivery. The open source community are responding to this need to advance integrated care and digital services by providing targeted resources to address the interoperability challenge. Addressing interoperability in health systems is a core part of achieving sustainable enterprise wide integrated care. Using Open Innovation 2.0 methods for advancing knowledge on interoperability, this paper describes the development of a micro credential for knowledge transfer on interoperability created by the Centre for eIntegrated Care (CeIC). Designed and developed to signpost interested stakeholders to targeted material and build understanding and capacity on the topic. The design approach and initial resource content are explained through the lens of a specific research project funded by an Elite S Fellowship to advance leadership and standardisation for Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in Europe.

Strengthening the Role of Academic Institutions and Innovation Brokers in Agri-Food Innovation: Towards Hybridisation in Cross-Border Cooperation

Existing research suggests that regions can develop their long-term competitive advantage through well-functioning interregional innovation cooperation. In this article, we use the example of innovation in small and medium-sized agri-food enterprises (SMEs) to scrutinise and compare regional innovation approaches on each side of the Dutch-German border and explore how they can converge into a cross-border innovation space. Particular attention is paid to the role of academic institutions and innovation brokers in creating a common innovation space. We explore how differences between two cross-border regions can be harnessed to enhance the impact of innovation, and how this may lead to what we describe as hybridisation effects. In the empirical analysis, we apply the concept of hybridisation to a cross-border innovation space, something that, as far as we are aware, has not been done before. We empirically ground the concepts of a cross-border innovation space and hybridisation and illustrate how relative regional strengths can lead to hybridisation effects. We conclude that differences in economic structures, institutional set-ups, visions and identities inherent in cross-border spaces are not only hindrances, but also opportunities, and we highlight the importance of these complementary strengths and the potential for their strategic use by regional innovation actors. Our findings are highly relevant for the further development of the Interreg Europe programme and the implementation of the EU’s Territorial Agenda 2030.

Where are the higher education institutions from knowledge protection: a systematic review

Purpose

Knowledge protection (KP) is one of the main knowledge management (KM) processes that aim to protect the organization’s knowledge from any inside and outside force leakage. In higher education institutions (HEIs), KP is rarely being discussed and covered in contrast to knowledge sharing (KS) in terms of its determinants. The purpose of this paper is to provide a deep analysis of previous research articles from 1980 to 2019 and examine the associated institutional factors on KP determinants within HEIs as a research objective.

Design/methodology/approach

The preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis was a well-established approach for analyzing the systematic literature review methodology. Several articles were published over the past decades collected from 5 different databases, but after the screening, 101 articles were reviewed and only 22 articles were relevant to the research objective.

Findings

The findings indicated that KP is under academic research topic in KM and has received minimal attention in HEIs compared to KS, which has been frequently studied in HEIs. The literature categorized KP determinants into four areas: technological, organizational structure, behavioral and ethics and organizational culture. It will open the door for academics to investigate further into the factors, theories and models of KP in general and HEIs from a particular perspective.

Practical implications

As evident from the paper finds, with few pieces of literature covered in this topic, HEIs have to protect the knowledge from any illegal usage or any expert’s knowledge loss after leaving the institutions. This study can help university leaders to understand how the different KP determinants can maximize KP without affecting the KS and develop the KP phenomenon for a strategic fit to enhance their institutions’ safe knowledge usage.

Originality/value

This is the first research of its type which has extensively examined the literature on KP related to HEIs. Also, this paper provides theoretical and practical insights through understanding the determinants that affect KP practices among academic staff.

The Impact of the Sustainability Principles on the Strategic Planning and Reporting of Universities. An Exploratory Study on a Qualified Italian Sample

Strategic Plans (SPs) and Sustainability Reports (SRs) represent institutional communication tools implemented by universities to demonstrate their adoption of sustainability and sustainable development goals (SDGs of Agenda 2030) as drivers in their strategic planning processes. These tools make the adopted strategies and operations visible and easily understandable to stakeholders, highlighting the university’s commitment to a new balance between business, environment, and the social sphere. Moving from this premise, with the aim to evaluate the degree of transposition of sustainability and sustainable development principles into the Italian university system, we propose an exploratory research on universities’ institutional declarations, in the form of the SRs and SPs available on their web sites. To this aim, we conducted a content analysis aiming at a preliminary phase of text coding, based on a set of analytical categories—pillars—namely Education and Learning, Research, Operations and Governance, and External Leadership. The work has allowed us to identify: an interesting extent to which the sustainability principles have been transposed into the Italian university system, with particular regard to the third category of Operations and Governance (36% of coded segments in SRs and 32% of coded segments in SPs); a considerable awareness of universities of their key role played on the sociopolitical and economic levels for the diffusion of the Agenda 2030 within civil society.

Education for Sustainability in Practice: A Review of Current Strategies within Italian Universities

Universities play a crucial role in the short-term implementation of education for sustainable development goals (SDGs). The fourth SDG aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and to promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”. Indeed, SDG4 is not intended as a goal in itself, but rather, a tool to achieve different goals and explore the best practices, via deductive-theoretical or inductive-experiential methods. Still, current literature on education for SDGs does not always consider the infrastructural and practical factors affecting the success or the failure of the practices mentioned above. The main purpose of this paper is to organize and describe a set of ongoing education for sustainability strategies that took place from 2016 to 2019 in Italian universities. Eighteen best practices have been collected after a national call by the Italian Network of Sustainable Universities (RUS), that aimed to map the current landscape of SDGs-related actions. Data have been analyzed based on the qualitative description provided by each university, according to four criteria: trigger, course type, approach (top-down/bottom-up) and declared mission. Results are depicted as a map of the current Italian higher education system, where a predominant mission (teaching) and a prevalent driver (top-down) have been found as the frequent features of SDGs educational initiatives. Further developments highlight the value of this first country-wide mapping of the Italian Higher Education Institutions implementing SDGs in their activities, that can avoid the isolation of individual experiences and, most importantly, can suggest some comparability and transferability criteria for similar cases.

Analysis of the Impact of the Triple Helix on Sustainable Innovation Targets in Spanish Technology Companies

The establishment of broad-based networks, such as the Triple Helix, for innovation and sustainability is sufficiently corroborated. In this work we suggest that the information received from the Triple Helix has a significant and different impact on the objectives of sustainable innovation, depending on whether companies cooperate or not. To this end, an empirical analysis of a stratified sample of more than 5000 Spanish medium and high technology companies in 2010-2014-2015 was carried out. The results confirm that companies that do not cooperate place more importance on the information received from the Triple Helix to establish their sustainable innovation targets.

Bridging Intellectual Capital, Sustainable Development and Quality of Life in Higher Education Institutions

This paper analyses the relationship between the intellectual capital of higher education institutions (HEIs) and their sustainable development practices, and assesses whether higher education institutions’ sustainable development practices are related to their stakeholders’ quality of life. Using a structural equation model, two model specifications are estimated, gathering primary data from a convenience sample composed of 738 full-time students and 587 teachers/researchers at seven Portuguese higher education institutions. The findings reveal that intellectual capital influences sustainable development practices directly and positively, whereas sustainable development practices influence students’ quality of life in a significant way, although the same is not verified for teachers/researchers. These findings provide insightful implications for policy-making and intellectual capital management for practices in higher education institutions; firstly, by showing that the sustainable development concept is associated with HEIs’ practices of economic, environmental, social and organisational sustainability; secondly, by concluding that public Portuguese HEIs need to improve the social dimension of their sustainable development practices, and here there may be room for improvement in the institution through better and more proficient social engagement that is more directed to the challenges of sustainability and social change; and thirdly, by showing that the inclusion of better sustainable practices has repercussions on the quality of life of all stakeholders.

Models, Processes, and Roles of Universities in Technology Transfer Management: A Systematic Review

Universities play pivotal roles when research findings are to be adopted commercially. Although these roles vary from one country to another, effective patenting and licensing procedures, as well as eventual commercialisation of scholarly inventions, reflect hard work on the part of the University mediating between the researcher and the industry through technology transfer offices (TTOs) in order to ensure that knowledge-developers take motivational and monetary credit for their findings. This paper details some existing models, processes, and roles taken up in some countries where sharing of intellectual property exists, and links it up with aspects of university–industry technology transfer, such as policies surrounding patenting, government investment and marketing, and the process of academic entrepreneurship, among others. 22 articles were found via a systematic review of literature and analysed with respect to four identified areas of focus: internal strategy, investment and market, academic entrepreneurship and policy. Based on models, processes, and roles in reviewed studies, our results indicate that new models for technology transfer mainly stem from the fact that there is no universally accepted model in the literature. Furthermore, management of technology transfer is mostly the responsibility of TTOs in most countries. While university TTOs act as intermediaries to protect the interest of the author/inventor, issues such as poor relationships between universities and industry, as well as funding, remain major challenges in many emerging economies. In contrast, researchers in western economies are mainly challenged by financial motivation and recognition within the academic domains.