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Valorisation is at the centre of many debates on the future of academic research. But valorisation has largely become narrowly understood in terms of universities' economic contributions through patenting, licensing, spin-off formation and technology transfer. This emergent restrictive definition of universities' societal impacts is a worrying development, overlooking the potential of universities' knowledge in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS). Our hypothesis is that HASS disciplines' disadvantage compared to the hard sciences (lesser policy attention and funding for commercialisation) arises because HASS stakeholders are not sufficiently salient as stakeholders to universities. Using case studies of three policy experiments, we argue that universities' responsiveness to stakeholders does not evolve simply and functionally but in response to the networks of relationships in which they are situated. This has important implications for how stakeholder research is used in higher education research, and for the design and implementation of policies to improve universities' societal contributions.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to resolve a tension in understanding how universities contribute to knowledge-based urban development (KBUD). Design/methodology/approach – 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. Findings – 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. Research limitations/implications – 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. Practical implications – 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. Social implications – 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. Originality/value – 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.

Introduction There is a broad consensus that globalisation and technological change have precipitated the emergence of a new knowledge economy in which economic success is dependent on innovation-based productivity growth (for a review see Temple, 1998). However, there are strong competing arguments over the spatial dynamics and form of this new economy. On the one hand, the ubiquity of ICT (information and communication technology), the dematerialisation of production, and the increasing mobility of factors of production suggest a`death of distance' and the`end of geography' (Cairncross, 1997; Dicken, 1998). On the other hand, the tendency for knowledge capital to agglomerate has produced new megacities dominating global production networks, and a number of highly specialised niche high-technology spaces (Sassen, 1991; Smith, 2003). These totemic new economy spaces manifest success through a combination of many apparent mechanisms such as clusters, dense innovation networks, or territorial knowledge pools (

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