Special track 9

SPECIAL SESSION TITLE: The Impact of University-Industry Engagement and the Rise of Competency Transfer Partnerships

TRACK PROPONENTS: 

• DIRK MEISSNER, HSE University, Moscow, Russia, d.meissner@hse.ru  

• DAVID SARPONG, Aston University, Birmingham, UK, d.sarpong1@asron.ac.uk  

• SILVIO VISMARA, University of Bergamo, Italy, silvio.vismara@unibg.it 

• GUSTAVO HERMÍNIO SALATI MARCONDES DE MORAES, State University of Campinas, Brazil, salati@unicamp.br 

SHORT DESCRIPTION OF PROPOSED SPECIAL SESSION TOPIC:  Liaising with industry has been an issue for public debate during the last decades. Lots or works have been done on the topic already however, it remains a hot issue in public and policy debates. While previously much discussion was focussed on transfer of technologies (until beginning 2000s), transfer of knowledge (2005-2015) and finally knowledge & technology transfer and their impact - the social economic and political influence of research) on regions, nations, and society as a whole, has come to occupy analogous intellectual spaces with concepts such as public value, third mission, and practice lead-research. The new turn has somehow provided a near hysteric questioning space for contestation to emerge in universities where target setting, evaluation, and measures can be fleeting and complex in form. What remains unclear is how this new radical policy innovation will impact on existing research and technological development programmes to support its purported aim of prioritizing joined-up thinking for the co-production of knowledge, value creation and capture, and competitiveness. In particular, we know very little about how university collaborative engagements with industry could be structured, governed, and managed in ways that emphasize the application of deep theoretical and practical insights and experiences to dealing with societal challenges and solving intractable problems within the contingencies of rapid disruptions in existing technological trajectories. To this end, this special topic aims to extend our understanding of the opportunities, potentialities, and limits of the new turn to university-industry engagement and impact, how they are managed and their implications for on regions, nations, and society as a whole. Therefore, we invite rigorous contributions, including conceptual and theoretical papers, state-of-the-art reviews, empirical research (quantitative and qualitative), and case studies from academics and policy experts to advance research on University-industry engagement from multidisciplinary perspectives. 

ACCEPTABLE RESEARCH TOPICS, BUT NOT LIMITED TO:

• how do universities and their faculties make meaning of engagement and impact

• exploring university-industry engagement and competency transfer partnerships as an organizing strategy, and how it connects across the sub-disciplines, academic tribes, and territories

• how do universities-industry engagement and impact initiatives differ from the traditional research and technological development policy programmes that have struggled to provide widespread life-altering results

• should university-industry engagement and impact activities be approached as an evolutionary process or a crucible event for tackling societal challenges

• how can the university inspire competency centers to mobilize collective action toward tackling societal challenges and respond to the call for engagement and impact

• how can we effectively evaluate the transaction cost associated with new university-industry engagement and competency transfer partnerships

• what organizing practices facilitate (or impede) new university-industry engagement and impact

Papers presented at this special session are invited to submit their papers to a Special Issue in Journal of Technology Transfer: https://www.springer.com/journal/10961/updates/25970428