Can Next Generation Universities help build a better world?
By Tim Bodley-Scott and Ersel Oymak
Worldwide, collaborative action through mutually beneficial university-industry-civil society-government partnerships, have a pivotal role to play in addressing the profound challenges that the world is facing. Growing these ‘quadruple helix’ alliances will be transformational since they will make a significant impact towards achieving the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) that most of the world’s governments have signed up to achieve by 2030.
Our experience developing and executing strategic alliances have shown us that next generation universities will focus on building relationships that can help tackle global ‘grand challenges’. Such alliances will involve the integration of university, industry, government and civil society resources to create shared value. Individually, these sectors cannot address the hugely complex challenges we face on their own. Together, such alliances can deliver a positive impact and help build a better world.
These priorities for universities especially are driven by accelerating digital transformation, the decarbonisation agenda, political will and a demand for a more ethical capitalism. Such multi-sector alliances are marked by deep, long-term shared priorities focused on Global and Local (‘glocal’) challenges, that achieve complimentary business and societal benefits.
Forward thinking universities have the foresight to realise that they must become more entrepreneurial to engage with multi-faceted, transdisciplinary, and cross-sector alliances that will enable ‘transformational collaborative advantage’ rather than solely competitive advantage. This is a win-win for all stakeholders as well as people and planet. Universities have untapped potential to work with global industry, governments and civil society to make a big impact towards achieving the UN SDGs through driving social, organisational and technological innovation.
In future, academics will need to think more entrepreneurially in all their engagements to leverage new opportunities. This requires serious thought, action and critique beyond conventional left-wing v right-wing politics or neoliberalism. It is about making the world a better place for everyone.
Universities increasingly recognise they must become more open and porous to collaboration with partners, both within their own regions and cross borders, particularly between the institutions in the wealthy Global North and those in the Global South. Building strong alliances requires like-minded people from across sectors who want to build a better world at different scales (local, regional, national and global) and achieve measurable societal benefit, including solutions to the UN SDGs and sustainable economic growth for all.
The urgency of unprecedented global challenges facing humanity today requires a new breed of universities. These institutions will work more closely together than ever before through research and innovation ecosystems that span the whole planet. They will need to collaborate with their peers as well as their counterparts in the Global South to innovate affordable and workable solutions to challenges such as tackling climate change, biodiversity loss and creating a zero-carbon circular economy. They will take full advantage of our era of digitisation to create new opportunities to collaborate and accelerate progress towards achieving the UN SDGs.
How can universities develop and deliver such world-changing relationships that achieve real societal benefit? In our experience, it is vital to provide mutual gain for all partners, addressing the ‘what’s in it for me’ question, and convey sustainable business growth in different geographic and R&D contexts. Universities can do this by focusing on the UN SDGs which present a $12 trillion global opportunity for sustainable business growth according to the World Economic Forum and Accenture report ‘Unlocking Value to Society’ (2017).
We have found that universities can engage effectively with corporates who share their vision and have the capacity to co-innovate and find tangible solutions to society’s biggest challenges. Our holistic and blended approach combines both trans-disciplinary programmatic activities (e.g. joint research, co-innovation, executive education) and once a trusted relationship is established, strategic corporate philanthropy, to build a long-term, challenge-focused strategic alliance. Often these activities are managed by universities through internal silos and most universities currently adopt only a transactional approach to external engagement and philanthropy.
All of these ideas will be extensively discussed in our forthcoming book titled ‘University-Industry Partnerships for Positive Change: How to Achieve Transformational Strategic Alliances to Address the SDGs’ (Policy Press). We will cover how universities can practically build and support symbiotic university-industry-civil society-government collaborations.
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More about the Authors
Ersel Oymak
Most recently Head of Strategic Alliances Directors & Corporate Relationships at UCL (2019–2021) and currently Non-Executive Director & Board Member at London Hounslow Chamber of Commerce (2017-Present), Ersel seeks to develop Transformational Strategic Alliances with key partners to drive a step change for customer-centric business innovation management across the global industry.
Tim Bodley-Scott
Tim is an experienced Strategic Alliance professional, currently working as an Advisor to UCL Computer Science, cultivating and delivering transformational partnerships with many of the world’s leading companies.
