The Boundary Spanners Development Programme aims to break down the engagement barriers between the universities and their regional/ national/ international business stakeholders by enabling the boundary spanning skills of the higher education faculty, staff, and leadership. We believe that people are the most crucial factor in the transferring of knowledge and innovation across institutions, mobilising resources, triggering organisational change, and making an economic and societal impact in their regions. Ultimately, we aim to create “champions” and bridge the skills and knowledge gap by: i. identifying boundary spanning skills and practices of the HEIs and Businesses in their collaboration with each other ii. profiling and analysing 45 boundary spanners in HEIs and businesses in the partner regions and across Europe, while presenting 10+ of those in concise infographic formatiii. developing and pilot testing the Boundary Spanners Workshop Series with 60+ HEI staff in 4, and 45+ SME representatives in 3 partner regionsiv. facilitating 16+ (2 pairs from each HEI region) HEI and Business staff to benefit from University-Industry Staff Exchange Schemev. preparing and disseminating the Boundary Spanners Learning and Experience Collection, including 20+ (4x5) Personal Application Project (PAP) cases development and implementation reports, as well as 4 (4x1) PAP good practice videosvi. organising 8 regional events, policy workshop and Cascading Training to 200+ HEI and business representatives, enhancing exploitationvii. developing the models for boundary spanners community building, self-assessment and certification for the sustainability of the project results.The purpose of the Boundary Spanners Development Programme is to empower university faculty and leadership in enhancing the contribution of the HEIs in the regional economic and social development. The programme will be based on the University-Business Cooperation Ecosystem.
The project has aimed to close the gap between the policy and practice and has addressed the need for building stronger individual capacity of HEI and business stakeholders in university-business-society collaboration by enabling the first cohort of “spanning boundary champions” who break down the engagement barriers in Europe. The project has focused on upskilling and further motivating HEI staff in their management and implementation of internal and external engagement.
Despite the strong policy support (Europe 2020 strategy and EU Growth Agenda), cooperation among the key actors in Europe is still underdeveloped, and their interaction remains insufficient in EU Member States. Given the fact that business engagement efforts of universities most times remain as paper strategies, not being able to translate those into meaningful action, the need for a systematic and comprehensive skills training becomes even more crucial.
<< Background >> Despite the strong policy support (Europe 2020 strategy and EU Growth Agenda), cooperation among the key actors in Europe is still underdeveloped, and their interaction remains insufficient in EU Member States. Given the fact that business engagement efforts of universities most times remain as paper strategies, not being able to translate those into meaningful action, the need for a systematic and comprehensive skills training becomes even more crucial. << Objectives >> The project has aimed to close the gap between the policy and practice and has addressed the need for building stronger individual capacity of HEI and business stakeholders in university-business-society collaboration by enabling the first cohort of “spanning boundary champions” who break down the engagement barriers in Europe. The project has focused on upskilling and further motivating HEI staff in their management and implementation of internal and external engagement. << Implementation >> Some of the objectives achieved during the implementation were:1. Bridging the research gap on skills, competencies and knowledge of Spanning Boundaries Agents2. Designing, developing and pilot-testing the first European training programme for spanning boundaries champions3. Introducing the Spanning Boundaries concept and generating desire across Europe4. Valorising the results of the project and building capacity across and outside partner institutions << Results >> The project has aided in breaking the barriers between universities and business/society to ensure the effective knowledge transfer, innovation uptake and higher graduate employability potential. The project has created "champions" and bridged the skills and knowledge gap to ensure (a) professionalisation and institutionalisation of engagement activities, (b) increased capacities of staff, (c) economic, cultural and social impact of research, teaching and (d) alignment of practices at HEIs.