Abstract
Universities of applied sciences (UAS) have a strong mandate to carry out research, development and innovation (RDI) activities in collaboration with local stakeholders. Geographical proximity is one of the key factors for the creation and success of RDI activities because of the positive balance between costs and benefits of local knowledge transfer, but they also depend on the networks of individual staff members. This paper aims to explore how maintaining and developing purpose-built and individual RDI partnerships during the COVID-19 pandemic has been managed. An enhanced conceptual framework for assessing contextual dimensions of the RDI activities beyond academic entrepreneurship as business ventures has been developed. The paper focuses on a single case study drawing on semi-structured research interviews investigating how the swap to remote working have affected RDI activities at Tampere University of Applied Sciences, one of the biggest UAS in Finland with intense regional linkages. The contribution of the study is twofold; firstly, the paper introduces an expanded theoretical approach for assessing the external and internal factors having an impact on the RDI activities beyond academic entrepreneurship. Secondly, by testing the proposed framework, it shares insights and good practices derived from empirical evidence, namely binary data and semi-structured interviews revealing experiences of RDI personnel and project managers involved with different phases of RDI process, for optimising high-quality innovation support, knowledge transfer activities and co-creation of new knowledge in exceptional circumstances.
Highlights
Started in late 2019 in China, and spread globally during the early months of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic is disrupting life due to the high infection rate, which is forcing institutions and societies to rethink how to coexist with an unknown virus until a vaccine or effective treatment is found
These challenges very related to all four contextual dimensions of the academic entrepreneurship having an impact to the RDI activities
The findings show how a regionally-focused higher education institution, such as the Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences, has a good strong expertise to carry out RDI activities and knowledge on the central funding instruments, which can facilitate businesses without previous experience to engage with publicly funded RDI projects
Summary
Started in late 2019 in China, and spread globally during the early months of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic is disrupting life due to the high infection rate, which is forcing institutions and societies to rethink how to coexist with an unknown virus until a vaccine or effective treatment is found. The impact is perhaps more severe on the research and engagement activities, in which the social and institutional network of relationships and knowledge exchanges must happen virtually. The combination of such situations asks for new knowledge on how research institutions are coping with the pandemic, and what kind of impact it has on the research, development and innovation (RDI) activities. RDI activities are understood mainly through universitybusiness collaborations, which entails different kinds of formal and informal ‘cooperative interactions’ seeking to generate mutual benefit (Davey et al, 2011) often linked with h the traditional university core missions of teaching and research (Galán-Muros & Plawa, 2016)
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