An increasing number of stakeholders demand that higher education institutions contribute to sustainability transitions in places where they operate. Concurrently, policymakers encourage universities to differentiate themselves from each other. On the one hand, universities’ sustainability contributions through third mission must complement those of other institutions in the same region to prevent resource fragmentation. On the other hand, they must also distinguish themselves to ensure that their sustainability efforts do not overlap excessively and become too similar. This article reports on the findings from a study of three higher education institutions in Vestland, Norway, exploring how external pressures and internal organizational dynamics influence their third mission positioning in relation to local sustainability transitions. The findings suggest that multiple coercive isomorphic pressures have played a key role in making these otherwise distinct institutions moderately similar over time. This convergence has, in turn, laid the foundation for closer coordination and collaboration in addressing regional sustainability challenges. Furthermore, we identify specific institutional carriers—symbolic systems, relational systems and routines—that have been instrumental in fostering complementary differentiation in third mission activities of the three universities. The article concludes with proposition of complementary differentiation as a conceptual lens to explore universities’ positioning in regional sustainability transitions, followed by policy recommendations and avenues for future research.

This article explores underlying mechanisms triggering a change in conceptualization of innovation in the European Union (EU), the impact of this change on institutional demands upon European universities and implications for evaluation procedures. We mobilize the theoretical concept of critical junctures to explore significant periods that have affected understanding of innovation in the EU as well as institutional expectations from universities. Through an analysis of European policy corpus relating to innovation, we identify three distinct periods, 1983–6, 1995–2000, and 2008–12, entailing fairly fundamental shifts that have considerably broadened the understanding of innovation and then demonstrate the way this broadening conceptualization has affected institutional demands upon universities. Following this, we discuss the implications of the critical junctures on evaluation approaches. We conclude by arguing that different approaches towards innovation have created complex institutional environment for universities to navigate and suggest that implementing more nuanced and customized evaluation schemes aligned to the institutional demands of each critical juncture could help addressing this complexity.

Universities are increasingly recognized for playing a proactive role in supporting culture and creativity-led regional development. Meanwhile, they are also expected to distinguish themselves in their core activities via mission differentiation. Often these two demands are pitched against each other while little attention has been paid to the way universities can manage them. Drawing on a case study involving 29 semi-structured interviews carried out with key actors, this article examines the way a public university located in a peripheral region in the Netherlands navigated such a complex institutional environment. The findings suggest that the university formulated a hybrid response strategy, engaging in both institutional demands simultaneously while prioritizing collaboration with cultural and creative industries and talent attraction over other sub-demands. More importantly, the authors demonstrate that organizational identity, which itself is influenced by peripheral characteristics as well as other institutional factors, plays a significant role in the formulation of a hybrid response strategy. They therefore argue that universities’ contribution to culture and creativity-led regional development is not only dependent on their resource capacity – as is often suggested in the literature – but also on how they envision their organizational identity; that is, the type of institutional profiling they want to pursue.

Social innovation has been increasingly regarded as an instrument through which transformative structural change, necessary to address grand societal challenges can be achieved. Social innovations are encouraged by the emergence of innovation systems that support changes not exclusively driven by a techno-economic rationality. In the context of this special issue, there has been both little understanding of social innovation systems within mainstream innovation ecosystem approaches and little analysis of the roles played by universities in social innovation systems. We here focus on the institutional complexity of universities and their field-level dynamics as serving as a potential break on the institutionalisation of social innovation. To deepen our understanding of this, we utilise a literature around institutional logics to foreground characteristics of organisational fields with regard to social innovation. Drawing on empirical data gathered in two public universities located in different countries, we show that in one case the potential of social innovation is undermined by two dominant institutional logics, in the other its permeation across the organisational field is seriously challenged by a more powerful dominant logic. The institutional logic approach is useful to highlighting the barriers to building productive innovation ecosystems incorporating social considerations, and helps to explain the persistent difficulties in reframing ecosystems approaches to reflect wider societal dynamics.

This chapter considers the role of universities in stimulating social innovation, and in particular the issue that despite possessing substantive knowledge that might be useful for stimulating social innovation, universities to date have not been widely engaged in social innovation activities in the context of Quadruple Helix developmental models. We explain this in terms of the institutional logics of engaged universities, in which entrepreneurial logics have emerged in recent decades, that frame the desirable forms of university-society engagement in terms of the economic benefits they bring. We ask whether institutional logics could explain this resistance of universities to social innovation. Drawing on two case studies of universities sincerely committed to supporting social innovation, we chart the effects of institutional logics on university-supported social innovation. We observe that there is a “missing middle” between enthusiastic managers and engaged professors, in which four factors serve to undermine social innovation activities becoming strategically important to HEIs. We conclude by noting that this missing middle also serves to segment the operation of Quadruple Helix relationships, thereby undermining university contributions to societal development more generally.

Objective The Role of Universities in Innovation and Regional Development (RUNIN) is a European Training Network for Early-Stage Researchers (ESRs) in the field of science and innovation studies. The aim of the network is to train researchers on how universities contribute to innovation and economic growth in their regions through research seeking to examine how universities fulfill their third mission in relation to regional industry and explore the range of university engagement with regional firms and institutions. The project operationalises the main research question of how universities can contribute to innovation and regional development through four main themes: People and Networks, Policies and Interventions, Places and Territories, and Practices and Governance. The aim of the training programme is to equip the next generation of researchers with the skills required to work across employment

This chapter considers the role of universities in stimulating social innovation, and in particular the issue that despite possessing substantive knowledge that might be useful for stimulating social innovation, universities to date have not been widely engaged in social innovation activities in the context of Quadruple Helix developmental models. We explain this in terms of the institutional logics of engaged universities, in which entrepreneurial logics have emerged in recent decades, that frame the desirable forms of university-society engagement in terms of the economic benefits they bring. We ask whether institutional logics could explain this resistance of universities to social innovation. Drawing on two case studies of universities sincerely committed to supporting social innovation, we chart the effects of institutional logics on university-supported social innovation. We observe that there is a "missing middle" between enthusiastic managers and engaged professors, in which four factors serve to undermine social innovation activities becoming strategically important to HEIs. We conclude by noting that this missing middle also serves to segment the operation of Quadruple Helix relationships, thereby undermining university contributions to societal development more generally.

Natural resource-based innovations (NRBIs), especially through the valorization of waste and side streams, have recently become a significant element of the bioeconomy agenda in several countries across the world. Accordingly, a variety of institutions, including universities, have been expected to contribute to such innovations. While there have been serious efforts within universities to play a key role in NRBIs, questions of the extent of institutional continuity of these efforts over time and how this can be achieved remain unanswered in the literature. This paper, therefore, seeks to identify the determinants of a highly institutionalized structure that is supportive of NRBIs in universities. By mobilizing a literature in which the level of structuration is conceptualized as the degree of institutionalization and by using a single case study of a Portuguese public university, it was found that several internal and external factors have contributed to the institutionalization process, which has led to the emergence of a sedimented structure. Despite a high degree of institutionalization, several challenges that have either impeded the harnessing of the full potential of NRBIs or that have posed a threat to the university’s highly institutionalized structure were also found. The paper concludes that the institutionalization of NRBIs within universities not only requires orchestrated organizational efforts but also more consideration of the social, economic, and political dynamics that have recently engulfed universities.

Universities have recently been pressurized to go beyond their economic conceptualization of third-mission activities and contribute to solving grand societal challenges in the regions in which they are located. Social entrepreneurship has emerged as one mechanism by which universities can address societal challenges. Despite a growing awareness of universities’ potential and expectations to enhance social entrepreneurship in their geographical vicinities, how these processes become legitimized within a higher education context has received surprisingly little attention. This paper, therefore, explores factors affecting the (de)legitimacy process of social entrepreneurship within universities. Using a single case study design that relies on semi-structured interviews carried out in a Dutch public university, it was found that organizational legitimacy of social entrepreneurship remains unestablished. Furthermore, the legitimacy process is affected by (1) the expectations of stakeholders, the difficulty of measuring social impact and third-mission indicators; (2) an overemphasis on high-tech research and application as an organizational identity; (3) the absence of a leader in the field and lack of organizational recognition; and (4) stringent regulations of public institutions in the Netherlands. In addition, enhancing social entrepreneurs is hindered by the lack of place-based belonging among the student body. Consequently, this paper argues that a holistic approach that focuses on the specificities of universities and the increasing competitive environment in which they have come to function, the potential facilitating role of other organizational actors in the field, and designing appropriate policy instruments and incentives would benefit universities in their efforts to enhance social entrepreneurship.

The RUNIN project's Design Lab Think Tank took place on 28th June 2018. Its aim was to discuss the topic of universities' engagement with society, specifically in their region. It used a world cafe format that brought together regional stakeholders to discuss how the University of Twente (UT) can incorporate societal questions in its core activities and, through this, create regional benefits. This report provides a description of the event, a summation of the initiatives proposed and an analysis of the discussion that was prompted by the sub-questions around the subject of universities' societal engagement.