The long-term impact of engaged scholarship: How do SMEs capitalise on their engagement with academics to explore new opportunities?

Abstract

We investigate whether – and how – small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are able to capitalise on their engagement with academics in order to explore new opportunities beyond the achievement of the immediate objectives of their collaboration. Using empirical evidence drawn from academic–SME collaborations supported by the Knowledge Transfer Partnership programme in the United Kingdom, we find that for many SMEs, engagement with academics has led to new business opportunities, including new market creation, new project engagement, new venture creation and new strategic network development. The exploration of new business opportunities is facilitated when three overarching factors are present: (1) a capable boundary spanner, who creates bridges within the SME and between the SME and the university, and gains an in-depth knowledge of the collaboration’s content; (2) a committed SME leadership willing to allocate resources and permissions to the collaboration, and encouraging an open flow of communication; (2) a strong relationship, characterised by trust and cognitive proximity, between the collaboration’s partners, who engage in open discussions and acknowledge and respect their different roles and responsibilities. These findings offer suggestions to SMEs, universities and policymakers in relation to improving the generation of long-term impacts on SMEs through engaged scholarship.

Trust initiation and development in SME-university collaborations: implications for enabling engaged scholarship

“…How is trust developed subsequently between SME and university stakeholders undertaking collaborative relationships? We also note that, despite the importance of negotiation and mutual trust for such faculty-practitioner collaboration (Amabile, et al, 2001) and sustained knowledge producing ES interactions (Rosli et al, 2018), there is little consideration of the HRD implications of trust initiation and its subsequent development for ES knowledge application. Our third research question therefore asks:…”

“…Collaborations tend to be focussed on seeking a solution to a defined problem in the SMEs core technical field (Santoro and Chakrabarti, 2002). Research suggests mutual trust and proximity are important in facilitating ES in SME new business opportunity development (Rosli et al, 2018;Tsui, 2013), Whitehurst and Richter's (2018:23) contending that a protracted ES collaboration 'offers up opportunities to build trusting relationships and to expose the members of the respective domains to the possibilities of creating new knowledge of value to both theory and practice'. Yet there is little discussion in the ES or SMEuniversity collaboration literatures as to how that trust might develop and the role of HRD.…”

Boundary spanning roles in cross‐border university‐industry collaboration: the case of Chinese multinational corporations

“…This is obtained through an effective relief of ‘potential tensions and conflicts’ as well as the solving of problems arising from the collaboration. In the context of the United Kindgom, Rosli et al (2018) describe boundary spanners as facilitators that solve problems caused by organisational or cultural differences between university and industry. Problem‐solving is also one of four main roles identified by Weerts and Sandmann (2010), Bansal et al (2012) and Takanashi and Lee (2019).…”

Addressing societal challenges through the simultaneous generation of social and business values: A conceptual framework for science-based co-creation

“…Values, in the plural, remind us of the different perspectives in assessing the business and social impact of any action, (see Stark 2017, Bollier, and Helfrich 2019, Bowels and Carlin 2020a and of innovation in particular. The economic value generated through science-based co-creation involves increasing access to new markets (Huang and Yu, 2011), producing new goods and services (Lee et al, 2012), and implementing efficient processes (Cervantes 2017;Rosli et al 2018) among others, whereas social values refer to improvements in conditions for society (Reale et al 2017), cultural development (Walter et al 2007), and the addressing of unemployment, poverty, and environmental degradation (Cassity and Ang, 2006;Rau et al 2018).…”