Today I’ve had the chance to participate in the Third Training Week of the RUNIN Project. My opening keynote was entitled “Policies for Entrepreneurship”. 
RUNIN Project is financed by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Marie Curie grant scheme. RUNIN intends to address The Role of Universities in Innovation and Regional Development. The aim 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 network program runs for a 4-year period from September 2016 and it is formed by these institutions:
- University of Stavanger, Centre for Innovation Research, Norway
- University of Lincoln, Lincoln Business School, United Kingdom
- University of Twente, Center for Higher Education Policy Studies, The Netherlands
- Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Department of Business, Spain
- Linköping University, Department of Management and Engineering, Sweden
- University of Aveiro, Department of Social, Political and Territorial Sciences, Portugal
- Aalborg University, Department of Business and Management, Denmark
- Intermunicipal Community of the Region of Aveiro (CIRA), Portugal
- Regio Twente, The Netherlands
RUNIN is based on 14 Doctoral Thesis:
- The PhD project “Networks of individuals in university-industry relationship” examines the nature and geography of academics’ personal networks across different universities.
- The PhD project “The role of informal versus formal networks for prosperous university-industry interaction” takes the point of view of firms as well as universities in an analysis of the role of informal personal and socially embedded networks with more formal organisational level networks in creating successful collaboration between universities and firms.
- The PhD project “PhD education for a future labour market” examines the extent to which universities adapt to this changing reality by integrating learning and the development of transferable skills in their PhD education, and to what extent this matches the type of skills demanded by employers outside academia.
- The PhD project “Collaboration and mobility as learning opportunities in PhD education” explores the role of university-firm interaction in PhD education.
- The PhD project “Knowledge systems for intelligent university regional engagement policy” explores how particular outputs generated by universities through their regional engagement activities translate into changes in regional economic development performance, and how policy-makers can seek to understand the meso-impacts of their micro-policy interventions around university-regional engagement.
- The PhD project “Universities and regional (innovation) policy and practice” examines how universities act as agents in regional development processes, mapping the range of activities in which they are involved and the institutional and organisational challenges they face in taking up this role across varying regional contexts.
- The PhD project “Universities as actors in regional development programmes” focuses on the engagement of universities with regional development policies through participation in Structural Funds and national programmes.
- The PhD project “Industry-University collaboration in different types of regions” explores the different contributions of universities to innovation in different types of regions, focusing particularly on the difference between universities located in central and peripheral regions.
- The PhD project “Dimensions of proximity in university-industry interaction” explores the spatiality of relationships between universities and firms and the role of distance in successful collaboration and knowledge transfer, using an international research project as a case.
- The PhD project “Universities as regional nodes in global knowledge networks” explores the role of universities as nodes in global knowledge networks between the region and knowledge producers elsewhere in the world.
- The PhD project “Assessing the impact of the collaboration university – firm” compares firms’ financial performance between those collaborating with universities and those not collaborating.
- The PhD project “New modes of university governance for dynamic regional stakeholder engagement” will explore how universities are developing new modes of governance to adapt to the changing circumstances, and in particular, the challenge of responding to pressures for external engagement alongside maintaining teaching and/or research excellence.
- The PhD project “Culture, the changing nature of innovation and the institutional challenges to the University” explores changing practices at universities in the context of the growing acceptance of the role of arts and culture in developing knowledge capital and human-centred innovation.
- The PhD project “From triple to quadruple helix: the role of society/citizens/customers In innovation” explores the changing role of universities within broader networks that also include civil society, which are being foregrounded in recent models of regional innovation governance systems .
Those Doctoral Thesis and the respective doctors will constitute a body of knowledge on how universities can contribute to innovation and economic development. I find RUNIN project essential for European Policy Makers.
Congrats for the initiative!
We will be fully aware and attentive, waiting for your results.