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The role of a university in an innovation system can take on various forms. The design of that role depends on how the university enters into collaboration with other parties in the innovation system, and how they all contribute to this design. Here, we apply a social system’s design perspective, and point out some key issues and aspects that should be considered if the role of universities is to be purposefully designed, rather than formed ad hoc.

The purpose of such a design would be to support a wide scope of mutual benefits for the university and its collaborators – a “maximum output” from the engagement. The aim here is to point out concrete matters for the system’s designer(s) to consider, in order to create a role for the university in the innovation system that embraces a range of the university’s assets and capacities. Therefore, we address a number of critical issues and aspects affecting the functioning of the university in regard to an associated regional innovation system. Why these factors are critical will also be discussed.

The paper stems from a pilot-project, where 16 semi-structured interviews from four (4) different Swedish regions were analysed, including regional innovation system executives, university innovation officers and leaders, as well as university research group leaders. We have analysed the reason why certain issues are critical for success when designing a university’s role in a regional innovation system:

First, a university's contribution to the support of an innovation system through expertise consultancy and resources require other factors than participation in the innovation process by knowledge involvement does. Second, within the university there is a tendency to make a distinction between the ideation part and the utilisation part of the innovation process: different units at the university tend to show more engagement in different aspects of the process. Third, research commission is at heart for both university researchers and external parties. Fourth, the university comprises multifaceted capacities and potentials to sustain core functions in the innovation processes: as a meeting place; as a strategic knowledge broker; or as a driving force. Fifth, a university’s various networks  is a resource that might be underestimated by external parties. Sixth, much of collaborative innovation is accomplished in smaller units within the university, far from centralised university administration. Centralisation supports the university’s relations to external parties, whereas de-centralised and independent involvement of university units supports direct and efficient collaboration.  

To maximise the output from the university’s engagement in the innovation system, the university’s role must be designed to distinguish between involvement in, or support of, innovation processes, between internal and external context requirements, and between what functions are suitable for innovation collaboration for different units of the university.

Regional innovation systems are recurrently presented by model figures. The purpose of such figures is to monitor certain ideas regarding each presented system. The topic of this paper is the role of the University represented through such model figures, and what ideas such figures are created to promote. In analysing the models, a visual communication perspective is paired with network notions.

The current objective is to discuss what politics can be found behind the idea promotion, when figures created within a university is compared to figures created outside of it. The aim is to clarify core differences between motives underlying the engagement of a university in its associated regional innovation system, by taking on the research question: How should we understand the disjunctions between model imagery on the University’s role in a regional innovation system used by people inside and outside of the University, respectively?

The research method used in this pilot-project, focusing on the Dalarna region of Sweden, is an analysis of policy documents in combination with interviews. The policy documents come from universities, as well as from other institutions engaged in regional innovation systems. Primarily the model figure of the regional innovation system presented by Region Dalarna (http://www.regiondalarna.se/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Mobilisera-for-tillvaxt-Innovationsarbete-och-smart-specialisering.pdf [p.18]) is compared to Dalarna University’s model figure of its regional collaboration self-understanding (https://www.du.se/sv/Samverkan/Lägesrapport och slutrapport – Förstudie Högskolan Dalarnas roll i det regionala innovationssystemet.pdf [p.11]), and analysed in regard to policy documents on the Dalarna innovation system. Semi-structured interviews are also made with regional innovation system executives, university innovation officers and leaders, as well as university research group leaders, 14 interviews in total, spread across four (4) different Swedish regions.

The results are several: there are commonalities in the understanding of the university’s role in the Dalarna innovation system, inside and outside of Dalarna University, but also several disjunctions:

(1)   It is a common understanding that there could be cooperation between the university and others based on research, and/or through education.

(2)   One disjunction regard whether the university should act as one centrally organized hub for such collaboration, or function through a more scattered and self-organized set of units, in accordance with specific knowledge areas, where collaboration takes place.

(3)   Another disjunction appears concerning the university’s role in regard to innovation, whether it should be expected to be involved in the very innovation processes, or be an external part in support of innovation by providing resources and expertise for those that innovate.

(4)   A third disjunction concerns the university’s regional engagement, whether its prime efforts should be focused inwards the region, or if it is more important to function as a network provider and facilitator towards other regions as well as globally.

(5)   The fourth encountered disjunction regards weather the university should take on the intermediating role as a (strategic) knowledge broker that connects and encourages parties to innovation collaboration, or, yet again, the active role as the (leading) driving force in collective innovation processes, covering entire strategic areas of intervention.

(6)   A more delicate disjunction, the fifth, is the different views on knowledge, where the external expectations on the university is to deliver configured pieces of knowledge, from research or education, ready to exploit into innovation and business, whereas the university’s internal understanding is that knowledge should be developed during the collaborative process, jointly with the external parties.

The implications of these results are that (1) the common attitude of the possibility for the university to be involved in the regional innovation system which constitutes the vital starting point for such involvement to be achieved in a systematic and meaningful way. The disjunctions are in that sense topics for negotiation: (2) how much the university should centralize its innovation system involvement must be balanced against the benefits of free and active collaboration with external parties on the level of units and individuals within the organization; (3) to what degree supportive functions for an innovation system should be expected from a university, or from others, and what actual innovation activities the university should be involved in, or not; (4) weather the university should have a more operative engagement within the region, or rather emphasize its capacity as a bridge towards other regions and countries through its networks; (5) in what regards it is useful that the university has a more strategic or leading role in terms of broking knowledge, or driving innovation processes; and (6) what are the goals and terms of collaboration – exploitation of existing knowledge or mutual development of new knowledge?

We see, as the main outcomes of this study, that the outset for a university to engage in the regional innovation system is affirmative, when involvement is recognized as possible in both research and education, from within as well as from outside the university. The existing disjunctions regarding a university’s role in the innovation system, though, present a challenge for negotiation, which, if not taken seriously, risks a collapse of collaborations and a failure of the involvement.

There are many expectations on Higher Education Institutions (HEI:s) from a range of other actors and organizations to involve and engage in systematic regional innovation and development. Likewise, attempts to achieve such involvement and engagement are many, but success is varied. This paper analyzes the consequences of multifaceted expectations on HEI:s from regional actors, for the involvement and engagement of academics in systematic innovation. Issues of conflict are discovered that constitute obstacles for collaboration. The aim of this study is to highlight disagreements regarding the university’s role in (regional) innovation systems in order to help solve such issues. Theoretically, we approach innovation systems as social systems, and consider systems as subjects of design. Empirically, we have collected policy documents (including figures), interviews, and workshop discussions between representatives for local and regional public administration, intermediary organizations, the university, as well as others, from four Swedish regions. We conclude by providing a set of considerations possible for use when designing the role of the university in an innovation system, thus facilitating a broader and deeper involvement and engagement of academics in innovation processes, or the support of such processes.

How language is used has political implications as well as communicational consequences. Regional development, using means of systematic support for innovation, is a widespread phenomenon globally that also includes numerous political ambitions and implications. This article argues that ambiguities regarding the use of terms such as ‘innovation system’ and ‘innovation support system’ need to be clarified to improve communication in this field, as well as to reveal underlying political ideas on how systematic support for innovation should be carried out, by drawing on examples from studies of regional systems. Such ambiguities contribute significantly to the often-mentioned lack of involvement and engagement in regional development on the part of higher education institutions and academics. Examining key terms and concepts of this discourse, in the interests of promoting a common and stringent use of terminology, helps to illuminate whether the desired academic involvement in innovation processes relates to ideation, implementation and commercialization, or to support for processes through the contribution of knowledge and expertise.