Entrepreneurial universities meet their private partners: Towards a better embedding of the outcomes of cross-sector collaborations

In the past decades, universities’ involvement in socio-economic development, which goes along with their teaching and researching activities, has defined a new role for them in society’s ecosystem. This new role is often referred with the term of “entrepreneurial” university, whose objectives are positive societal, economic and environmental impacts. In order to fulfil such objectives, entrepreneurial universities might engage in cross-sector collaborations with external organisations. Despite the great contributions that cross-sector collaboration can give to the partners involved, the outcome is mostly unfocussed and rarely embedded. This paper explores the outcome
embedding in the cross-sector collaboration between entrepreneurial universities and the private sector. To this end, we provide the case of the collaboration between a Dutch airline company and four Dutch entrepreneurial research and teaching institutions. We aim to uncover hindering and
enabling factors to the outcome embedding in order to design an interaction platform, design it together. This platform will be a tool to encourage the outcome embedding, moving from being inspired by to the actual implementation of the cross-sector collaboration. In order to fulfil this goal,
this study employs a research through design methodology. This approach is a generative process, where cyclic loops of iterations and evaluations with stakeholders tend to the research goal. The solution is a digital platform, co-created with all stakeholders. This study can inspire practitioners and future research on the problem of unsuccessful cross-sector collaborations, between
entrepreneurial universities and external organisations, with more emphasis on the value of embedding and translating the outcomes.