Strategies of University-Industry Cooperation That Impact on Regional Development

STRATEGIES OF UNIVERSITY-INDUSTRY COOPERATION THAT IMPACT ON REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT:

ASSESSMENT OF GOOD PRACTICE

INTRODUCTION

The Lisbon Summit, led by the European Union member states, set the challenge to convert Europe into the most advanced Knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010. To meet this ambitious target, funding programmes for innovation, education and research have been committed, and an ambitious entrepreneurial promotion programme launched.

Funded from 2004 to 2007 by the European Commission INTERREG IIIC Programme, The Regional University-Industry Strategies Network or ‘RUISNET’ comprised nine European partners[1] in eight countries. One of its objectives was to identify the good practices that have an impact on regional development in 3 categories: Innovation, SMEs and Territory; Training and the Labour Market; Entrepreneurial Spirit and Knowledge-Based Enterprise Creation.

Crucial to identification of good practice in University-Industry Cooperation [UIC] strategies was the development of a robust methodology to aid identification, analysis and assessment.

The development of the methodology required a number of stages of collection, assessment, method review and fine tuning of qualifying criteria, output measurement and impact assessment. As with product development, the methodology therefore passed through a number of “prototypes” of data collection forms and assessment systems.

This paper describes the finalised method for assessing good practice in UIC strategies. The method was tested in an open awards call in which 57 cases were submitted. The highest scoring 30 cases have been published and 12 cases received awards or recognition.

The method is robust and can be applied regionally, nationally and internationally to find, reward and promote UIC good practice.
THE RUISNET PROJECT AWARDS METHODOLOGY

Categories

The RUISNET project investigated UIC strategies in three categories:

1.  SMEs, Innovation and Territory,

2.  Training and Labour Market,

3.  Entrepreneurial Spirit and Knowledge-Based Enterprise Creation.

These were categories selected for the RUISNET project. However, the methodology described here is suitable for assessing non-categorised cases or cases categorised in alternative ways such as technology areas, industrial sectors, ethnic groups etc.

Criteria

Qualifying criteria for cases were clear university and industry cooperation and regional impact. The method assesses the quality of the cooperation and regional impact and the case’s distinctive criteria of innovative character (objectives and process), transferability (across industry sectors and regions) and sustainability of the project.

University-Industry Cooperation

Definition of UIC: Cooperation is defined as involving two or more parties willingly working together for some mutual benefit. Such relationships may be short or long term and may involve one or more projects or areas of activity relevant to the parties involved. This cooperation goes beyond the provision of a service by one party for the other solely for financial remuneration e.g. a consultancy contract or licence of a patent is not considered to be cooperation unless it includes additional cooperation within the agreement.

Consideration should be given to:

·  Scope and dimension – business areas, duration, numbers involved

·  Intention – targets and objectives

·  Promoters – public or private finance

·  Actors - regional bodies, universities, business organisations

·  Commitment – formalisation, contractual agreements

·  Beneficiaries – types and size of businesses, numbers of companies, ethnic groups

Regional Impact

Definition: Impact is defined as changes and effects that would not occur in the absence of the project/case being delivered.

The nature of impact will depend on the aims, objectives and design of the project, and the social, economic and physical environment in which they operate. Direct outputs from a project such as people being trained, may be easily assessed, however indirect outputs such as the impact of those trained people increasing their income and therefore local spending should also be considered.

There should be consideration of:

·  Economy – profit, wealth, tax revenue

·  Enterprise – start-ups, new enterprise survival

·  Enterprise value

·  Employment – growth and higher level employment

·  Health and social welfare value

·  Knowledge – expertise, educational attainment

·  Competitiveness – gross value added per head, investment

·  Regional policy

·  Regional innovation

Innovative Character

Definition: There are a number of definitions of ‘innovation’, however, for a RUISNET project/case assessing strategies, it is any example of new methods of university-industry collaboration. This is in quite specific areas such as:

·  Ways of bringing new networks together

·  In engaging businesses with Universities

·  In systems for structures for UIC

The interest in innovation is more in the process of collaboration rather than its end product (although the latter can be cited as proof of innovative success).

Transferability

Definition: Transferability is defined in terms of ‘policy transfer’, i.e. whether good practice in the particular regional or industrial sector project/case has any relevance, and therefore could be transferred, to another region, country or sector. National and regional conditions will affect whether a process could be transferred therefore cases were considered for transferability as well as cases in which there was evidence of transfer. Thus, cases can be assessed on:

·  Proven transferability – where there is evidence that projects have already been transferred to another region or industry sector

·  Potential transferability – where there is evidence that there is the potential for transfer due to similar local and regional conditions elsewhere.

Sustainability

Definition: For the RUISNET project use of the term ‘sustainability’ did not refer to environmental factors or social balance, but referred to the project/case itself. A case was considered to be sustainable if the project or its secondary effects were lasting. Therefore sustainability covers issues such as duration, continuity, balance, permanence and stability of the case/project and its development.

Sustainability was assessed at the level of:

·  Project – duration, continuity, self-sustaining

·  Secondary effects – the outputs of the project impact on additional areas.

APPLICATION FORM

The Application Form was developed though a number of “prototypes” so that the sections and questions elicited the most comprehensive but concise information. Therefore there is a strict word limit on each section and clear guidelines for the applicants. As initial assessment is on the case summary, the guidelines state what it should contain and the order of description. For ease of categorisation and searching, keywords are required. It is important that there is authorisation of the given information with permission to publish.

The Application Form and guidelines are appended.

ASSESSMENT

Good practice cases were assessed through a series of stages. Cases that qualified on the threshold criteria, UIC and regional impact, were passed to an external expert who issued an initial score against the case summary. This allowed a limited number through to the second stage of expert panel examination of the complete application. The subsequent shortlist of cases was passed to a jury comprised of experts for final deliberation.

The process is described below.

Call for cases
Application Form and Guidelines / / Cases assessed for threshold criteria of UIC and Regional Impact / / External Evaluator YES / NO Assessment
Applicants must follow the guidelines on summary content and structure / / Qualifying cases initially assessed on summary / / External Evaluator
Scores on summary
Opportunity to expand case descriptions in criteria sections / / 30 cases selected and assessed by experts / / Expert panel
Scores on total application
Short listed cases / / Jury selection of winners

APPLICATION AND EVALUATION

Application

RUISNET awards applications were submitted through a web portal (www.ruisnet.net),

and the application form was completed on line. There was the facility to save an application on line until completed and submitted. Tools were incorporated such as reminders and section word counts to aid the applicant and ensure that the forms could be more readily evaluated.

Evaluation

An electronic evaluation tool was developed for the RUISNET project as an aid to scoring the applications for the initial assessment. Each application was scored on an ‘evaluation form’ with two parts; the first part checked for UIC and regional impact (simple YES/NO), the second part allowed qualitative evaluation of the features of the case. This was carried out by a single trained evaluator and in RUISNET resulted in the selection of 30 cases for the second phase evaluation.

The second phase of evaluation involved a panel of experts. For RUISNET, the Advisory Council[2] chose nine experts. Each UIC category was judged by a group of three.

As with the initial evaluation, the team of experts were trained in the use of the online evaluation tool so that they could access and assess the cases remotely. The evaluation tool allowed a quantitative score to be given for criteria and evaluations from each expert were synthesised to yield an average score.

The third phase evaluation was by a jury consisting of top representatives from the European Commission administration, universities and industry. Using the generated quantitative scores from the second phase, the jury added a qualitative judgement to select the winners.

OUTPUTS

The outputs of the methodology development were:

·  A developed and tested methodology for identifying and assessing good practice

·  Application and evaluation methods finalised

·  Identification and publication of 30 good practice cases

·  Selection of 9 award winners and 3 recognition certificates

·  Thirty published cases of UIC that show regional impact

RUISNET project outcomes will be the adoption of the methodology to assess and improve regional and national UIC and the use of good practice strategies for UIC in additional regions and industry sectors. Additional RUISNET project outcomes include the web portal (www.ruisnet.net) which posts an experts database and the State of the Art Report covering the partner regions in Europe.

The success of the RUISNET project has been recognised in its selection as one of the finalists for the Awards for Innovative Regions 2007. These Awards are organized by the Assembly of European Regions.
The European Innovation Award is conceived to give recognition to the European
Regional authorities and their institutions which have stimulated, fostered and
implemented innovation in their territory.
These actions can be both direct - such as initiatives of authority-controlled
institutions, scientific or technological centres and educational activities, and
indirect - such as innovation-supporting instruments placed at companies’
disposal, for instance relevant laws, financial schemes, training programmes
(indirect actions).

CONCLUSION

The development of a robust methodology for UIC description and evaluation has enabled identification of good practice. The RUISNET project has revealed a wealth of UIC strategies throughout Europe and huge potential for transfer from one region to another. The pilot award call has raised the profile and shown the importance of UIC and the published cases have established tools for regional development.

APPENDICES AND ADDITIONAL MATERIAL

Application Form - Appended

Guidelines - Appended

Published case studies- Web portal www.ruisnet.net

Expert register - Web portal www.ruisnet.net

State of the Art Report- Web portal www.ruisnet.net

RUISNET Final Methodology for publication 10 of 11

[1] IMPIVA - Institute of small and medium sized industry, Valencia, ADEIT – University of Valencia, SCIENTER – Research and training services centre, Emilia Romagna, Technical University of Dresden, London South Bank University, TecMinho – University-Enterprise association for development, Portugal Norte, Hermia Business Development, Lansi-Suomi, Donau University of Krems, Austria, Ostrava Science and Technology Park

[2] The Advisory Council was made up of European Association of Development Agencies, European University Association, European Association of Craft, Small and Medium sized Enterprises, European BIC Network, International Association of Science Parks, European Universities Continuing Education Network, European Regions Research and Innovation Network, European Distance and E-learning Network, European Regions Knowledge based Innovation Network.