Paul Benneworth

• Professor (Full) at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences

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 af...

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 af...

There has been demand in many countries for the establishment of small campuses in more rural locations to spread the benefits of higher education both through the provision of university courses and through the positive economic spill-overs for these communities. Evaluations of the impacts of these universities according to current models show lim...

Smart cities refer to place-specific collaborative systems where multiple actors collaborate to collectively address public problems. However, smart city initiatives regularly frame citizens as the weakest link, as passive consumers rather than active creative agents. This article argues that power imbalances between citizens and other organisation...

Over the last decade, the idea of societal impact resulting from publicly funded research has changed from being a relatively fringe concern related to high-technology entrepreneurship and spin-off companies to becoming an increasingly important public policy concern. This has stimulated academic science policy research to investigate the impact of...

There is an increasing recognition that there is a class of problems that society must solve urgently in the twenty-first century if humanity is to survive into the twenty-second century – the so-called ‘Grand Challenges’. Science policymakers have been active in recognising these challenges and the attendant need to develop new multidisciplinary w...

In this paper, we address the research question of to what extent is it possible to discern theories of change being built into the business practices of nascent social enterprises in ways that lay foundations for the subsequent upscaling of their social innovations? We argue that social enterprises that are ‘ready-to-upscale’ are those that clearl...

In this chapter, we debate the current view on university-regional engagements and suggest a renewed theoretical framework based on four main elements-macro, meso, micro dimensions, as well as a meta-dimension of temporality that cuts across all levels. The macro environment is typically defined as pertaining to public policies, culture, laws, and...

This chapter introduces the main logic of this volume, which starts from the grassroots level of universities' "everyday" engagements, looking at the manifold ways in which university knowledge agents build connections with multiple regional partners across the public and private sectors, and civic society more generally. Roles, functions and norma...

In this paper we seek to realise the potential that Spaapen and van Drooge’s productive interactions concept offers, but which we argue has been lost through its operationalisation as a process of ‘counting interactions’. Productive interactions arise through moments of contact between two very different systems (the societal and the scientific), a...

The study of universities’ role in regional engagement has traditionally been focusing on exceptional cases. This book presents a reconceptualision which embraces its underlying complexity, and proposes a roadmap for a renewed research agenda. Starting from the grassroots level of universities’ "everyday" engagements, the book delves into the manif...

Commonly, social innovation is defined as new ideas proposals to the needs of humans. However, there is a lack of a well-definition comprehensive leading the fragmentation of field research. On the other hand, the contribution of universities for social innovation development is still less investigated. In this sense, this study intends to explore...

Due to the increasingly knowledge-based nature of economic development, and with universities representing sources of knowledge capital, regional partners have taken a growing interest in understanding how universities contribute to their regions. At the same time, regional policy makers have an interest in harnessing universities to existing sourc...

Universities have a special role, some would say a unique role, in their cities and regions in meeting a diverse set of needs, and, in doing so, contributing to the economic and social development of those cities and regions. No other organisation in the region has quite such a scale and diversity of engagements and impacts. This book examines the...

The recognition of academic research as a potential source of economic growth and social welfare has attracted the attention of both policymakers and academics over the past decades. Incentives have been introduced by policymakers to encourage academics to make their research accessible to wider audiences to improve societal benefits. Academics may...

There is increasing interest in the question of how different stakeholders develop, implement and lead regional upgrading processes with the concept of place leadership emerging as one response to this. Simultaneously, universities face growing expectations that they will contribute to regional development processes – often through their collaborat...

This technical report presents the findings of the case study carried out in Northern Netherlands on the role of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the design and implementation of the Smart Specialisation Strategy (RIS3). It is one of the case studies undertaken in the project Higher Education for Smart Specialisation (HESS), an initiative of...

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....

University-industry-government relationships driving regional innovation are often discussed by using the shorthand of the ‘triple helix’, referring to any arena where these partners come together. This rapid expansion of the idea’s use risks it becoming a ‘policy concept’ whilst potential tensions of collaboration can be ignored. Instead of ‘happy...

The publication of our article “Introducing the dilemma of societal alignment for inclusive and responsible research and innovation” (Ribeiro et al., 2018) was accompanied by three commentaries (Guston, 2018; Nordmann, 2018; and Kuzma and Roberts, 2018). In the original article, we invoked Collingridge’s dilemma of the social control of technology...

Academic literature about the idea of social innovation grew sharply over the last decade, with researchers trying to define its concept and presenting several examples of successful social innovations. However, to support the development of social innovation initiatives is important to have a conceptual framework that allows evaluating its true im...

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 thi...

The chapter addresses the question of how universities respond to regional policy, and in particular, the ways in which academics are motivated and encouraged by regional development policies. The chapter specifically asks whether entrepreneurial universities create frameworks which allow university actors to positively contribute to collective dev...

There is growing policy interest in stimulating academic researchers to increase their engagement with societal partners. Understanding of research impact is typically framed by conceptions derived from natural and technological fields. In this article, we scrutinize how prior studies discuss the societal impact of social sciences and humanities...

This paper considers how heterogeneous groups of regional stakeholders design and implement strategic activities that contribute to their region’s innovation capacity. We aim to understand how these stakeholder groups attempt to create new regional development pathways, and explore why otherwise enthusiastic and willing partnerships might fail to p...

Universities play an important role in the knowledge based economy, and are key regional actors, providing knowledge, resources and human capital. Border regions are a specific type of peripheral region, often peripheral in terms of distance to the centre and national governments. But even in centrally located border regions developing integrated c...

The recent rise of interest in ideas of the Responsible University needs to be understood as part of a wider rise of interest in responsible behaviour by researchers and innovators, fuelled by a realisation of their powerful positions in knowledge societies. Universities have been transformed in recent decades in ways that have emphasised their pri...

This article develops a model for a regional responsible research and innovation (RRI) policy, integrating existing European Union policies on RRI, and on research and innovation strategies for smart specialisation (RIS3). RRI and RIS3 are central concepts in the EU’s innovation policy agenda, but there are tensions between the two approaches. The...

In this chapter we study the innovation process of an eHealth application which emerged as a user-driven, local project. The eHealth application is based on a communication platform that creates a network around a particular patient who is in need of regular care and the different parties involved in the patient’s care, and is aimed at facilitating...

Increasing public investments in distributed platform infrastructures created new opportunities for economic growth and social welfare but simultaneously were associated with growing societal distrust in science’s power to solve societal problems. The concept of Responsible Research and Innovation was advanced as providing mechanisms to recouple sc...

Goal / Purpose: Universities are increasingly investing in makerspaces. These learning spaces are presented as a place where students can share their projects, can innovate using rapid prototyping equipment, use low and high technology that serves as a starting point for students to launch start-ups, get advice on how to place a product in the mark...

É necessário incrementar a inovação através do empreendedorismo acadêmico, fortalecendo a interação entre universidades e empresas, onde a pesquisa sobre modelos de cooperação é necessária. Há muito o que aprender por meio de ações desenvolvidas em outros países, que por meio de modelos emergentes, são uma excelente alternativa para melhorar a qual...

Impact is increasingly important for science policy-makers. Science policy studies have reacted this heightened urgency by studying these policy-interventions meaning that policy has developed more quickly than theory. This has led to the prevalence of a 'common sense' impact definition: research's societal impact are direct economic effects, such...

Science and technology spaces around the world are, simultaneously, major physical, technological and symbolic forms, key elements of economic strategy, and sites of international labour movements and knowledge transfer. They are thus the product of multiple imaginations, with multiple, potentially divergent, objectives. In this paper, we compare t...

Cross-border regions are faced with the difficulty that resources for knowledge and innovation may be nearby but difficult to connect to because of the border. Universities could play a supportive role in building innovation environments, facilitating cross-border knowledge exchange. In this research we attempt to understand the systemic roles that...

Universities are increasingly expected to provide contributions to regional innovation and economic development processes. Despite much work on how universities can contribute to regional growth processes, there is much less consideration about why universities might choose to engage in regional development. Even though they may receive public fund...

There is an increasing recognition that dealing with sustainable development need to address the social structures that encourage unsustainable economic and environmental practices. Universities represent important sources of knowledge for addressing sustainable development, but there has been relatively limited consideration of their contributions...

In this chapter we study the innovation process of an eHealth application which emerged as a user-driven, local project. The eHealth application is based on a communication platform that creates a network around a particular patient who is in need of regular care and the different parties in-volved in the patient’s care, and is aimed at facilitatin...

This paper develops a conceptual framework to understand the value of an increasing number of university study programmes that send students to the global south to learn through volunteering. We ask what determines the benefit that these activities bring to the host community. To understand this, we conceptualise these activities as student volunte...

Since 1989 the European Commission’s policy on border regions has slowly shifted focus. Current Interreg policy is increasingly focused upon innovation and cooperation between SMEs. In this paper we question whether this emphasis on firms and innovation neglects the build-up of other kinds of activities and institutions antecedent to effective firm...

Collaboration between regional stakeholders is increasingly emphasized in innovation policy as a way to activate the inherent agency in a regional innovation system. Partnerships of diverse stakeholders have been identified as critical, being able to envisage and implement future pathways that in turn bring change to a region. Thus, the knowledge o...

There is an increasing interest in the analysis of how universities should maximise their specific regional contribution alongside their traditional teaching and research goals. However, due to the institutional heterogeneity it is necessary to understand the process by which universities create regional benefits, specifically through their third m...

In a knowledge-based economy, universities are vital institutions. This volume explores the roles that universities can play in peripheral regions, contributing to processes of regional economic development and innovative growth. Including a series of case studies drawn from Portugal, Norway, Finland, the Czech Republic, Estonia and the Dutch-Germa...

In this discussion paper, we outline and reflect on some of the key challenges that influence the development and uptake of more inclusive and responsible forms of research and innovation. Taking these challenges together, we invoke Collingridge’s famous dilemma of social control of technology to introduce a complementary dilemma that of ‘societal...

New public governance studies have increasingly sought to highlight the importance of citizen engagement in local decision-making processes as a way to identify suitable approaches to matters of public concern. There is a particular absence of good theoretical development building upon empirical work exploring citizen participatory processes as pot...

Universities have been defined as important actors in today’s knowledge economy since the 1990s, contributing to economic growth and development through knowledge production and collaboration with diverse stakeholders (Benneworth, Charles, & Madanipour, 2010; Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 2000). Nevertheless, universities’ success is at least partly a f...

In the previous chapter we argued that there are a variety of pressures in peripheral regions that can hinder universities from becoming involved in regional development. Nevertheless, as the empirical chapters in this book are able to compellingly demonstrate, there are universities managing to overcome these barriers and support processes of regi...

The volume has explored the implicit model for modern regional innovation policy in peripheral regions as a means of understanding how universities can contribute to regional development in those regions. We argued in Chapter 12 that universities are able to most effectively contribute in such places through what we tentatively name ‘transformative...

In this volume we have been concerned with the way that universities contribute to regional development in the periphery. We have been particularly concerned with the tensions that arise when universities under many pressures to internationalise and compete seek to engage with regional innovation environments that are not inherently dynamic. In the...

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 café format that brought together regional stakeholders to discuss how the University of Twente (UT) can incorporate societal questions in its core activitie...

Border regions are not often associated with innovation and economic prosperity. And even when they are prosperous, cross-border interaction is still mostly limited. The opening up of borders in Europe has presented new opportunities for firms located in these border regions to co-operate for innovation and knowledge to flow across borders. Despite...

There is an increasing recognition that there is a class of problems that society must solve urgently in the twenty-first century if humanity is to survive into the twenty-second century—the so-called ‘Grand Challenges’. Science policymakers have been active in recognising these challenges and the attendant need to develop new multidisciplinary way...

This paper categorises the nature of what we have labelled as the potential for 'GrImpact', in the evaluation of the wider influence of research, beyond academia. As the impact agenda broadly defined grows to include more formally criteria that consider the value of research beyond academia, so too does the pressure to ensure that these assessments...

Universities should place delivering societal benefits centrally within their strategic decision-making. But this comes at a time when universities face extensive pressures to transform every aspect of their institutional existence, raising questions about whether the third mission can ever truly be a strategic objective for higher education. To un...

This paper explores the relationship between disciplinary and organisational cultures and regional engagement. Disciplinary and organisational dimensions are key factors of academic identity and have a crucial impact on the ability of higher education institutions to actively engage within regional actors. The analysis builds on empirical data from...

Policy-makers increasingly acknowledge universities as important actors to foster regional development, resilience and innovation. National higher education policies frame universities as drivers of innovationbased national and regional economic development and innovation. Nevertheless, despite these efforts, universities face the challenge of nati...

A most common and visible policy response to globalisation has been increasing the efficiency of the HE system by concentrating (merging) existing already established HEIs. This may involve various forms of associations of HEIs ranging from relatively weak associations, such as consortia, to fully fledged associations, such as pure mergers (Amaral,...

There is an increasing recognition that dealing with sustainable development need to address the social structures that encourage unsustainable economic and environmental practices. Universities represent important sources of knowledge for addressing sustainable development, but there has been relatively limited consideration of their contributions...

This chapter presents and discusses two cases of regional upgrading involving public-run universities in two Northern European countries, Norway and the Netherlands. More specifically, it illuminates how academic groups associated with the field of medicine took pro-active steps to establish and further develop regional coalitions which, over time,...

In the last two decades, a renewed interest on the concepts of social innovation and social entrepreneurship has emerged. In fact, a large body of theoretical developments that occurred in the fields of innovation, territorial development, social economics, and public governance (among others) have emphasised the need to adopt new approaches to new...

The global financial crisis of 2008 and ensuing collapse of the Irish economy and the Great Recession brought the golden decade of higher education and research investment to an abrupt end. In place of broadening the intellectual base, fundamental questions were asked about the purpose and relevance of university-based research. The changed circums...

Dutch humanities has been in a crisis. In the period this chapter covers there were no less than three Grand National Commissions concerned with the Dutch humanities survival. At the heart of this crisis has lain a fundamental tension in the public value of arts and humanities, dating back to the 1980s where universities were churning out many more...

What is the public value of arts and humanities research? If we take a look around the world, then it is easy to conclude that such a question is irrelevant precisely because its public value (or at least that of the underlying arts and humanities) is so self-evident. But if you start as an outsider (even as a scholar) to read a humanities article...

Recent decades have seen changes in the relationship between the state, higher education and university-based research. Questions are asked about the purpose and focus of research, the social role of research, and correspondingly the appropriate governance models. Concepts of “public good” and “public value” have moved centre stage. How they are de...

Many humanities scholars have voiced fears regarding the damage that the unfettered adoption of alien practices and norms around research commercialisation could wreak for arts and humanities research. This plays to longer-standing fears of crisis in the humanities arising from its weak coupling to the interests and needs of an increasingly technol...

Strategic agency and institutional change: investigating the role of universities in regional innovation systems (RISs). Regional Studies. Past analyses rooted in the thick description of regions successful in constructing regional innovation systems have given way to analyses more focused on the intentionality in these processes, and how actors in...

Multi-site universities face the challenge of integrating campuses that may have different profiles and orientations arising from place-specific attachments. Multi-campus universities created via mergers seeking to ensure long-term financial sustainability, and increasing their attractiveness to students, create a tension in campuses’ purposes. We...

Science policy increasingly focuses on maximising societal benefits from science and technology investments, but often reduces those benefits to activities involving codifying and selling knowledge, thereby idealising best practice academic behaviours around entrepreneurial superstars. This paper argues that societal value depends on knowledge bein...

Universities face a tension from two urgent pressures they face, firstly to demonstrate that they deliver value for society in return for public investments, and secondly to demonstrate their responsibility by introducing strategic management to demonstrate to their funders that they meet their goals. In this special issue, we explore the ways in w...

In Norway, humanities research has a long history and a strong sense of identity as a distinct and valuable field of science, and the field’s researchers have emphasised basic, long-term and independent research. These aspects have been confronted with policy developments that have denounced a clear separation between basic and applied research, ai...

We cannot give a final answer to defining “the public value of arts & humanities research”. Our contribution comes by firstly offering a better definition, of knowledge circulating in networks creating societal capacity, but also identifying where more research is necessary to better ground this definition. Current policy debates are hemmed in by t...

Drawing on original international research by a cross-European social science team, this book makes an important contribution to the discussion about the future of arts and humanities research. It explores the responses of these fields to the growing range of questions being asked about the value, impact and benefit of publicly-funded research. The...

Ambiguity surrounding the effect of external engagement on academic research has raised questions about what motivates researchers to collaborate with third parties. We argue that what matters for society is research that can be absorbed by users. We define ‘openness’ as a willingness by researchers to make research more usable by external partners...

This paper looks at the interplay between ‘creative industries’ and ‘cultural policy’ in France. We analyse how university stakeholder communities in the field of elite vocational training schools for ‘applied arts’ such as Bande dessinée (comics and animation) and videogaming negotiate the over simplistically reified relationship between public po...