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Innovation enables growth and helps address social challenges. This research aims to identify evidence that can characterize an innovative university based on its university management. Thus, the authors define the following research problem: How to measure innovation in a Higher Education Institution (HEI) that intends to be innovative based on its university management?

To this end, the authors conducted a literature review, with a qualitative approach, as well as a case study with data collection through the documental analysis of research that was carried out with the community, namely: Undergraduate Students Profile survey, Reputation of the Institution and Innovation Octagon.

The authors noticed that the results presented by Innovation Octagon show an increase in most indexes, mainly Processes and People, followed by Leadership, Strategy, Relationships and Funding. However, there was a reduction in Structure and Culture.

The results point to the relevance of measuring innovation in the institution, mainly through the use of the Innovation Octagon. The longitudinal measurement of innovation in the institution enables the management of the HEI to constantly progress and develop in favor of the society’s demands for the training of competent professionals for their future professional reality.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of human capital related to gender and nationality diversity in boards of directors on the innovation of university spin-offs (USOs) in their entrepreneurial ecosystem. Following the intellectual capital (IC) framework and the resource dependence theory, upper echelons theory and critical mass theory, it hypothesizes that the relationship between board diversity and USOs’ firm innovation is non-linear.

To test the research hypotheses empirically, a sample of 827 Italian USOs over the period 2009–2018 was analyzed using zero-inflated Poisson regression modeling. A robustness test was also performed.

Gender obstacles remain in USOs’ entrepreneurial ecosystem, with little involvement of women in boards, and the benefits of human capital for firm innovation emerge with increased female representation. Nevertheless, a few foreign-born directors embody valued IC in terms of human capital from an internationally linked entrepreneurial ecosystem, which decreases with more foreign-born directors due to communication costs and coordination problems.

The emerging non-linear relationships imply that gender- and nationality-diverse boards in USOs constitute critical human capital factors boosting the devolvement of entrepreneurial processes, in terms of firm innovation, in university entrepreneurial ecosystems.

This study contributes significantly to the move from traditional corporate governance analysis through an IC framework, fostering an understanding of the role of human capital and its diversity determinants in spurring firm innovation among USOs considering the university entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Students are an essential part of university innovation. Through their training, research and energy, students acquire and transfer knowledge to industry, and they help establish new businesses and start-up companies. This paper investigates how universities might capture the entrepreneurial energies of students toward the goal of university improvement and transformation while also educating students to pursue their aspirations to create new businesses.

A framework is presented for integrating “Students as Partners” (SaP) with entrepreneurship training to achieve “inside innovation,” meaning innovation to advance the practices of the university. Students participating in Blackstone Launchpad at three American universities were surveyed as to how they perceive innovation culture and support at their universities.

Common services (help with business plans, market assessment and entrepreneurial training) had the biggest positive effect on satisfaction with university support. Nevertheless, many students had sought to apply their innovations inside their university and, in so doing, found navigating bureaucracy and knowing “whom to talk to” to be the biggest obstacles. Respondents were least likely to agree with the statement that their institution was willing to accept risks.

Survey included three universities. A larger sample would be useful for a broader assessment.

Partnered services, technology entrepreneurship, system add-ons and immersion are proposed as four strategies to overcome obstacles to make universities more innovative in their practices.

The paper proposes a culture change toward engaging student entrepreneurs in innovation within universities to improve higher education practices.

A framework for how higher education leaders might use the SaP model to capture entrepreneurial energies of students for university improvement and transformation.

The purpose of this paper is to resolve a tension in understanding how universities contribute to knowledge-based urban development (KBUD).

The paper is a conceptual paper, which analyses the tension as emerging between the university and the wider societal activity. The paper creates a framework for combining insights from both those theoretical frameworks to better understand why universities might choose to contribute to KBUD.

The paper argues that it is important to understand the benefits that the universities get from participating in the KBUD. This can be through the unique tacit knowledge that emerges in the social innovation process, but their might also be value for the university in terms of two other variables, material resources and symbolic legitimacy.

The paper is a literature review and therefore is limited to raising a series of future questions and directions for research in the field, as well as to providing a lens and context for existing work.

There are clear implications for those seeking to improve universities contributions to KBUD. It is not merely enough for strategic leaders to come together and agree that promoting the university will promote KBUD: it is necessary to modify a range of processes within the university to ensure that a wide range of actors are able to benefit from participating in KBUD activities, and that it facilitates their own teaching and research activities.

For universities to make a substantive contribution to promoting KBUD, policy-makers must ensure that they do not create disincentives through universities’ teaching and research activities.

This is the first time that a paper has sought to bridge between theories of urban development and social innovation, and universities’ internal institutional and organisational dynamics.

This paper aims to argue that innovation system foresight (ISF) can significantly contribute to the third mission of universities by creating an active dialogue between universities, industry and society.

This paper’s approach is conceptual. The authors analyse the third mission and relevant literature on innovation systems and foresight to explain how and why foresight contributes to the third mission.

The authors propose that foresight contributes to the third mission of universities, particularly to the research and development and innovation dimensions through the development of joint understanding of the agendas and future needs of stakeholders. In addition, foresight enables education to be designed to address identified needs.

The findings are both conceptual and exploratory in nature. Thus, the argument needs further examination through a broader study on foresight in the university–industry context and/or longitudinal research on the outcomes and impact of foresight in this context.

The findings highlight the importance of understanding the systemic nature of innovation and its role in economic development. Universities must understand their role within the larger innovation system to fulfil the potential of economic development and by extension, their third mission.

The paper outlines a novel approach of using ISF to promote university–industry partnerships and the growth of innovation systems. The paper also contributes to the discussion of the third mission by outlining that mission in practical terms.

Given their capacity to generate knowledge, universities can be the primary external source of knowledge and innovation for companies. Despite studies on the potential drivers of open innovation, the actors involved in these projects beyond academics and the most effective practices that universities follow for successful university–industry collaborations remain unclear. This study aims to identify the enablers and best practices universities follow to contribute to successful university–industry open innovation results, providing a conceptual framework for the management of such initiatives.

Articles from peer-reviewed academic journals identified in the Scopus and Web of Science databases were researched in this scoping review. The review used descriptive and thematic analyses and focused on 93 articles published between 2013 and 2023 that analysed universities’ enablers and practices for knowledge transfer to the industry.

Organisational factors, stakeholder attitudes, infrastructure, and external factors facilitate knowledge transfer from universities to companies. The most effective practices for promoting innovation are related to project management, policies and incentives and are relational and educational. Performance results can be evaluated through quantitative and qualitative indicators, measured at the different phases of the innovation process, considering the impacts achieved.

Previous reviews have focused on barriers, researchers’ motivations or specific enablers. The enablers and practices identified were analysed with a systemic vision, considering the university as a unit of analysis. This study suggests a comprehensive conceptual framework for the successful management of university–industry open innovation.

Drawing on examples from the more developed realms of technology transfer and other “managerial professions” (Rhoades, 1998; Rhoades & Sporn, 2002) in the academy, this paper explores possible organizational sites for housing protocols for the measurement of the social value of individual innovations in higher education (that may enter the market or and augment or precede commercial valuation), and the possible implications of those different settings for the academy (particularly in terms of motivating more faculty to engage in more innovative and entrepreneurial activities). Organizational location matters. Organizational site is related to professional perspective and to the institutional outlook that attaches to various sorts of work in the academy. Five possible sites are explored, analyzing the dimensions of such locations from the experience of other “new” activities in universities. One type of site consists of an interstitial (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004), nonacademic, support unit of managerial professionals (neither faculty nor senior level administrators), as in an Office of Technology Transfer or an Office of Institutional Research. A second type of site would be an academic unit in which measurement tasks could be performed by faculty members. A third type of site would be a hybrid model that combines elements of the first two models, as in the case of entrepreneurship units in many universities. A fourth possible type of site would be to situate such activity in an intermediating association (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004) outside of the university, which mediates between public and private sectors, and that promotes various sorts of innovation and measurement as in the case of Educause and innovative information technologies. A fifth type of site would consist of establishing university extension units in the community, to provide services more directly to constituents, as traditionally was the model for agricultural extension in land grant universities. Each of the models has its owns benefits and challenges, its implications for what sorts of professionals would be doing the work and what they would see their principal function as being, and for the impact they would have on the academic workforce and the institution's direction.

The aim of this chapter is to shed light on the perspectives of organizational innovation in higher education in light of socio-economic transformations as articulated in Vision 2030 for Saudi Arabia. A case study evaluating strategic innovation at the Arabian Gulf University (AGU) in Bahrain was conducted using Balanced Score Cards. A questionnaire was designed to capture enablers and barriers in organizational innovation in higher education. The chapter concluded that institutional inertia, limited implementation and evaluation processes are the key impediments for organizational learning and knowledge management. The study recommends to incorporate organizational innovation to foster entrepreneurship, strategic innovation and learning at higher education institutions (HEI).

The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate the role of higher education establishments in Middle Eastern countries specifically Saudi Arabia. The contributions of higher education establishments are particularly significant in relation to regional and national innovation system, which have been earmarked as engine for growth of the local economy across the region. Our study has chartered the dynamic nature of higher education in the region and their networking capabilities in order to be recognized as key stakeholders of the emerging economy. The study is informed by theoretical dimensions of “open innovation” and how the framework can accommodate the dynamic nature of higher education establishments in order to provide further impetus to ambitious projects such as Vision 2030 in Saudi Arabia. Our study is limited by further empirical evidence but has implication for the region in offering new insights around the evolving conceptualization of entrepreneurial universities and national innovation system.

Social innovation is a nascent field. Within research on social innovation, the context of higher education has largely been ignored. To better understand social innovation, it is important to explore factors that facilitate social innovation in universities’ context. There is little research on enablers of social innovation in universities and the impacts of social innovation. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to understand the enablers of social innovation in the Saudi Arabian context. Moreover, the impacts of social innovation projects are also explored.

A qualitative approach was used to carry out this study. Data were collected through semistructured interviews, and content analysis was performed.

Data revealed that institutional commitment, mission, active collaborations, curriculum, support, training, community university engagement offices, university social impact offices and reward and evaluation were among critical enablers. The impact of social innovation in terms of social, institutional, economic and community specific was also reported.

Research on the enablers and outcomes of social innovation in the higher education context is limited. This study adds to the innovation literature by investigating what processes and factors (enablers) can help universities to engage in social innovation initiatives and what are the outcomes (impact) of engaging in social innovation. Findings of the study have important policy implications.