Europe 2020, the European Union’s ten-year growth strategy, aims at delivering smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. The strategy sets targets in the areas of employment, research and development, climate change, education and poverty, and social exclusion for the coming decade. It is within this context the Horizon 2020 scheme highlights impact, co-creation, and quadruple helix cooperation for innovation in response to societal challenges. Hereby, knowledge and research results of the social sciences and humanities (SSH) play a crucial role.
However, definitions and understanding of such concepts are ambiguous, sometimes contradictory, which makes it difficult to determine their applicability and effectiveness. Thus, there is a need for clearer definitions and viable and measurable valorisation processes to determine the value and outcomes of such processes. There is also a need to move beyond concepts and models into the actual work with these matters: to talk to the people from academia, government, industry and societal partners about their experiences with co-creation and the considerations these experiences have involved and the lessons that have been learned. Quadruple helix actors need to be committed to and actively engaged in co-creation, despite it being multifaceted and seldom naturally occurring.
For all the reasons above, the ACCOMPLISSH consortium, made up of 14 universities from 12 countries (representing a range of SSH sub-disciplines), is engaged with a variety of quadruple helix partners from government, industry and society. By setting up a multi-actor platform for SSH impact, ACCOMPLISSH is in the process of establishing a platform for dialogue wherein academia, government, industry and societal partners, jointly and equally, identify barriers and enablers of co-creation – with the intent of initiating, widening and optimizing co-creation.
To meet these deliverables, a comprehensive state-of-the-art review on existing research and good practice in the field and focus group interview sessions on the impact from the humanities and social sciences have been completed.
For the focus group interviews, a standardised protocol in and for the quadruple helix networks has been designed and tested. Using the protocol, information at regional events was collected, specifically, on-site focus group interview sessions were held by each consortium partner.
With the objective of identifying barriers and enablers of co-creation, these sessions revolved around lessons learned from quadruple helix co-creation and impact-driven collaboration. In focus were the first-hand experiences of representatives from academia, government, industry and society in terms of barriers and enablers of co-creation.
Recommendations of the study are:
• Allocate reasonable time, sufficient financial funds and adequate human resources
• Involve all stakeholders when defining the common area of concern from the outset
• Nurture stakeholder relationships
• Address differences in institutional logic, rationale, incentives and roles
• Address differences in nomenclature, language and modes of communication
• Challenge one’s own and each other’s thinking
• Provide platforms and spaces for interaction
• Make use of facilitators and translators, and intermediaries to optimise collaboration
• Learn from good practice and research
• Address questions of impact, validation and valorisation from the outset
• Make the case for SSH
9b. Scale(s) of governance (to include analysis of SDGs as a global scale initiative)
