Abstract
Universities have become more engaged or entrepreneurial, forging deeper relations with society beyond the economic sphere. To foster, structure, and institutionalize a broader spectrum of engagement, new types of intermediary organizations are created, going beyond the “standard” technology transfer offices, incubators, and science parks. This paper conceptualizes the role of such new-style intermediaries as facilitator, enabler, and co-shaper of university–society interaction, making a distinction between the roles of facilitation, configuration, and brokering. As a case study, the paper presents the Knowledge Mile in Amsterdam as a novel form of hyper-local engagement of a university with its urban surroundings that connects the challenges of companies and organisations in the street to a broad range of educational and research activities of the university, as well as to rebrand the street.
Highlights
In the last decades, universities have become more engaged or entrepreneurial, forging deeper relations with society
Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS) is the largest university in Amsterdam, with 46,000 students studying at seven faculties
There is a lot of literature available on the intermediation of economic knowledge and technology transfer, on knowledge transfer offices, incubators, and science parks, or how universities integrate societal engagement into their teaching and training programmes
Summary
Universities have become more engaged or entrepreneurial, forging deeper relations with society. It has become common for universities to have dedicated intermediary departments or organisations to systematically foster interaction with society, in the form of technology transfer offices or incubators, helping academics to valorize research findings, forge links with companies, or create startups. These types of intermediaries predominantly focus on economic aspects, and are described and analysed in-depth in the literature. Much less documented are new types of intermediaries that are being set up to foster and support different and broader types of engagement that go beyond the economic realm and are more linked to the ambition of universities to address societal challenges and adopt action research or new, more interactive educational concepts. The paper ends with conclusions and reflections on the role of intermediation in university–society linkages
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