The knowledge economy, innovation and the new challenges to universities: introduction to the special issue

Abstract

Universities face new challenges in the knowledge economy, due to two underlying transformations. One is that universities have increasingly developed from bodies of professorial self-governance bodies towards a status as 'complete' organisational actors, able to develop and deploy organisation-level strategies. A second is that by becoming key players in the knowledge economy and responding to stakeholder expectations, universities also have taken on new missions in addition to teaching and research. We propose that a series of new challenges arise from interrelations between universities' internal organisational dynamics and changes in their external relationships. Moreover, we outline the contributions to this special issue, each of which address a specific question through their respective conceptual discussion and/or in-depth examination of these challenges. We conclude with recommendations for future research on the roles of universities in the knowledge economy and for innovation. Specifically, we propose that future research should simultaneously tackle vital issues about governance of universities and their activities, while also further developing extant empirical work on the microfoundations of academic knowledge production and career dynamics.

Teachers, researchers, but not innovators? Rethinking university-industry collaboration

“…Most previous studies assume that the university should be the party to generate new ideas (Menzies, 2004;Bercovitz and Feldman, 2006) to be transferred to industry in the form of patents or startups (Aaboen et al, 2016;Aaboen et al, 2017;Laage-Hellman et al, 2019). While research is one of the university's core functions (Thursby and Thursby, 2011), the third mission of collaborating with industry for new businesses has created a conflict with both research and teaching (Wonglimpiyarat and Yuberk, 2006;Brostrom et al, 2021;Compagnucci and Spigarelli, 2020). In a non-traditional approach to university-industry collaboration, the collaboration between the university and the SMEs in the RSN as outlined in this paper did not deal with the sourcing of new ideas (or innovations) to industry (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, 2000;Bercovitz and Feldman, 2006), the facilitation of such innovations to incumbent firms (Moilanen et al, 2015) or the triple helix collaborations.…”

“…This observation becomes interesting once it is put against the prevailing role of universities in university-industry collaborations, namely, that of creating new ideas and businesses (Bercovitz and Feldman, 2006). The universities’ role in developing innovations and businesses has been questioned as it may not lead to any success of such endeavors (Wonglimpiyarat and Yuberk, 2006; Brostrom et al , 2021; Compagnucci and Spigarelli, 2020) and as it collides with the core functions of universities: teaching and researching (Thursby and Thursby, 2011). Still, it remains extensively practiced.…”

A data mining approach to forecast students’ career placement probabilities and recommendations in the programming field

“…As the world is changing rapidly, education is rising as an essential means for fostering people, developing society, and building an important mechanism for a quality workforce developing worldwide. Therefore, the growth of education is still crucial and dedicated to cultivating human resources to keep walking back and forth with changes in the economic and social systems to for establish an education system to better academics and careers [1][2][3].…”

Research Productivity: Trend and Comparative Analyses by Regions and Continents

“…Therefore, as argued by D'Este and Patel (2007) and Tchamyou (2017), the underlying two communities are growingly interacting with one another. The strand of studies within this remit of research largely builds on the importance of universities being equipped with the latest technologies in order for them to rapidly catch-up with frontier countries in terms of knowledge production and innovation (Puplampu & Mugo, 2020;Broström et al, 2020). Such equipments entail scientific infrastructure that is consistent with the novel repertories and/or competence as well as the insights that are essential in the identification and acquisition of timely knowledge.…”