TMSD 14 (2) pp.

71–91 Intellect Limited 2015

International Journal of Technology Management & Sustainable Development

Volume 14 Number 2
© 2015 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/tmsd.14.2.71_1

Lars Jonsson, Enrico Baraldi and Lars-Eric Larsson

Uppsala University

A broadened innovation
support for mutual benefits:
Academic engagement
by universities as part of
technology transfer

Abstract Keywords
While the spin-out funnel has received professional support to enhance its effects academia-industry
in most western universities, much less attention has been paid to the possibility to interactions
enhance the effects of academic engagement (i.e. publications, meetings and collabo- academic engagement
rative research among others) in the knowledge exchange activities of universities. commercialization
By using the case of Uppsala University as a reference, the aim of this paper is to indicators
describe how a holistic organization for innovation support can be managed to create innovation
mutual benefits both for the external organizations, the society, the university itself management
as well as its faculties. Four key elements seem to be of importance to the effectiveness knowledge exchange
of the support organization: (1) the alignment with selected goals and activities of the technology transfer
university; (2) the recruitment strategy, with innovation support officers possessing
double competences; (3) building trust, among all stakeholders and (4) the introduc-
tion of specific tools to enhance the effects of academia-industry interactive activities.
  We conclude that a holistic approach provides many benefits for the univer-
sity as well as for the external organizations involved. An important finding is
that the commercialization funnel and academic engagement are not two separate

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tracks but actually seem to lever each other’s so that commercialization seems to
be important to build trust and stimulate the academic engagement as well as for
embedding the university innovation support units in the industrial network, and
the later may result in concrete commercialization projects. Our results also indi-
cate that this broader strategy for innovation support seems to appeal better to the
fields of humanities and social science compared to traditional tech-transfer. Still,
many results need to be codified, and more research is needed to fully understand the
impact of academia-industry interactions over time.

Introduction
During the last two decades, policy-makers have been particularly interested
in making use of academic knowledge that comes from universities to trans-
form them into innovations via increased directives and incentives to boost
their commercialization efforts (Etzkowitz et al. 2000; Bercovitz and Feldmann
2006). This interest reflects a general view that university research, often paid
for by governmental money, must give a payback in figures like patent appli-
cations, creation of new start-ups, employment numbers and other indicators
for economic growth (Balconi, Brusoni and Orsenigo 2010).
As a result of the Bayh-Dole Act attributing US universities ownership of
the results of the research sponsored with federal funds (Mowery and Sampat
2005), most US universities today have Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs),
causing an increase from less than 250 patent applications from the US univer-
sities in the year 1980 to 13,271 applications and 4,700 patents issued, in the
year 2011 (AUTM 2012). Following this example, almost all European research
universities today have a TTO with professional support for commercializa-
tion (Mowery and Sampat 2005). The aim of the TTO is normally to use the so
called spin-out funnel (Clarysse et al. 2005), relying on a linear process model,
to increase the number of patents filed on research results and transform
these into business deals based upon out-licensing agreements or the creation
of new companies (Clarysse and Moray 2004). In this way, the university itself
may receive a cash payback for its efforts (i.e. royalty incomes and licensing
fees) and its scientific knowledge can be utilized to enhance economic growth
in the society (Bray and Lee 2000; Bercovitz and Feldmann 2006).
It is important to stress that this model is very much driven by expec-
tations of future incomes (Baraldi and Waluszewski 2011). The fact is that
the ten most active US universities account for the lion’s share of growth in
patenting (Powell, Owen-Smith and Colyvas 2007). Indeed, most university
TTOs barely break even when full costs are taken into account (Trune and
Goslin 1998; Turk-Bicakci and Brint 2005; Powell et al. 2007). Only 25 per cent
of invention disclosures make it to the licensing stage even at Stanford
University, and many active licences fail to earn any net income. Five licences
accounted for nearly 72 per cent of the revenue generated by Stanford TTO
during 30 years of activity in between 1970 and 2000, and all but one of them
were disclosed in 1981 or earlier (Powell et al. 2007). Policy-makers and poli-
ticians tend to judge, somewhat simplistically, that an increased number of
patent applications and new spin-outs are proof of increased innovations in
the hope of future economic growth and global competiveness (Salter and
Martin 2001; Baraldi and Waluszewski 2011), thus boosting this develop-
ment further by direct or indirect incentives to the universities and/or the
researchers.

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However, the spin-out funnel is not the only way to use academic
knowledge and research results as a source of innovation and economic
growth. The most common channels through which research results and
gained knowledge at universities are transferred to its surrounding society,
are different interactive channels called ‘academic engagement’ (Perkmann
et al. 2013). The most common transfer channels are publications, conferences
and meetings, contract research, informal conversions over organizational
boarders and consulting and also collaborative research, co-supervising Ph.D.
students and industrial Ph.Ds (Salter and Martin 2001; Jacobsson and Perez
Vico 2010).
A large study with more than 1100 US companies found that, according to
company managers and researchers, patents and licenses only stand for 14 per
cent of the knowledge transferred, while conferences and informal meetings
stand for 18 per cent each, and using academic researchers as consultants
for 17 per cent (Cohen et al. 1998). An investigation of the opinions of MIT
academics found similarly that the relative importance of patents and licenses
was even smaller, only 7 per cent (Agrawal and Henderson 2002). Even if
these figures can be questioned for being estimations and biased by an active
culture opposed to commercialization of research results in the latter case,
they show the importance of academic engagement for the transfer of knowl-
edge from the universities. It is also well known that a discovery will have a
better chance of being developed into an innovation in an existing organi-
zation experienced with business development and embedded in a business
network, than in a new start-up staffed with inexperienced researchers from
a university or by independent inventors not sufficiently connected to an
existing business network. This is reflected in a study of 1091 independent
patented inventions in Ontario, Canada, made by Åstebro (2003). Only 75 of
the inventions, or less than 7 per cent, made it to the market and only 6 of
them, or 0.5 per cent, became profitable.
Thus, it stands clear that academic engagement, and not only the spin-out
funnel, constitutes a very important factor when trying to lever the economic
output of university research. Yet, this channel of interactive processes has
been paid very little attention both by policy-makers and by researchers. One
reason why the effects of professionalizing, which is support for not only the
spin-out funnel but also academic engagement, have not been studied and
discussed so much may be a result of the difficulty in measuring, account-
ing and controlling its results (Baraldi, Ingemansson and Launberg 2014). The
effects on such academic engagement normally become clearly visible only
after several years when there has been a combination of long-lasting interac-
tive processes. Furthermore, they are often difficult to recognize as they are
embedded in other development processes involving external organizations
(Pavitt 2004; Håkansson and Waluszewski 2007).
Against this background, our aim in this article is to fill in some of the
gaps in the literature identified by Perkman et al. (2013) regarding the role of
organizational support in academic engagement. Since the academic engage-
ment obviously is important in the universities’ role as a knowledge provider
in an innovative society, it must be of interest to develop innovation support
organizations at the universities which do not only support commercializa-
tion through start-ups and patent licensing but also the indirect channels of
knowledge transfers to external partners. The interactions in these channels
also have an opportunity to be bilateral, resulting in that questions from the
external organizations may stimulate and guide academic researchers in their

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seek for new knowledge. This leads to an even more interesting question if a
broadened innovation support at the university could create mutual effects so
that not only the external partners would gain from the transfer but also the
researchers and the university itself. This article seeks to address the ques-
tion of if and how mutual benefits can be achieved by broadening the mission
of the university technology transfer activities to include innovation support
for academic engagement (Perkmann et al. 2013). Furthermore, it seeks to
describe and quantify these benefits and compare them with the running cost
of such a holistic professional support organization. The ambition was not,
however, to make a true cost-benefit analysis but more to roughly estimate
if the cost of a broadened support can be justified. For this purpose we have
studied Uppsala University in Sweden. Our methodology relies on a fifteen-
year case study during which the innovation office at the university has evolved
from a traditional TTO into a more holistic professional support organiza-
tion for developing innovations based upon the activities of the university.
The general aim of this article is to give an overview of the evolution of the
innovation support system at Uppsala University and its effects, while more
in-depth studies and analysis of the specific activities and tools applied by
the innovation support unit at the university are presented in separate arti-
cles (Baraldi, Lindhal and Severinsson 2011; Baraldi and Waluszewski 2011;
Baraldi, Forsberg and Severinsson 2013; Baraldi and Launberg 2013; Baraldi et
al. 2014; Jonsson et al. 2015). More in-depth studies and specific analyses are
also the objective of on-going research.
The article is organized as follows: after brief background section describ-
ing the context of our reference case, theoretical and methodological sections
follow before we describe our findings and finally, we discuss our main find-
ings, proposing how such a university structure can be managed and what
effects can be expected from it. We also give some recommendations for
further research.

Background
Uppsala University is Scandinavia’s first university founded in 1477. It is situ-
ated in the city of Uppsala, Sweden, 60km north of Stockholm. It is a compre-
hensive research university with about 45,000 students and a turnover of SEK
6.3 billion, corresponding to about €675 million. Of these funds, 70 per cent
is used for research and to fund Ph.D. students, which makes the university
the most research-intensive comprehensive university in Sweden. Technology
transfer at the university has a long history with several success stories. Since
Swedish legislation still includes a so-called professor’s privilege, all research
results are legally owned by the individual researcher.
Knowledge transfer and exchange have traditionally been an issue
between researchers and external organizations, with minimal involvement
by the university. Therefore, all commercial activities were more or less done
ad hoc until the late 1990s. In 1995, the Swedish government founded eleven
university-linked holding companies as a tool to involve the universities more
actively in commercialization. One of these holding companies is UU Holding,
controlled by Uppsala University. It is a for-profit organization, acting on
arm’s-length distance from its mother university.
For the last fifteen years, the activities of UU Holding has been broad-
ened and developed to include other ways to achieve value for the manage-
ment of the university and its faculties than only profits coming from direct

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commercialization. These values are: (1) increased external and governmental

research funding, thanks to multidisciplinary projects involving external and
industrial partners; (2) enhanced quality in research, thanks to close interac-
tions with users, with positive effects also on research funding for the facul-
ties involved and (3), as a result of (1) and (2), an enhanced positioning of
the university increasing its attractiveness for both researchers and students.
In 2007, a special innovation support unit called UU Innovation was created
within the university. This unit is staffed with professional innovation support
officers (PISOs) who are backing the early development phases of commer-
cialization as well as the different processes included in academic engagement.
The traditional commercialization through start-ups and out-licensing deals
remains the focus of UU Holding. A majority of the PISOs have an academic
research background, resulting in at least a Ph.D. combined with several years’
experience of business development in managerial positions of external organ-
izations. In this article, UU Innovation, UU Holding and its business incuba-
tor, UIC, are together defined as the innovation support unit or units (ISUs).

Theoretical background
In this section we present first the background on the models of changed roles
and interaction patterns of universities in relation to industry and society at
large. Then, we connect these models with open innovation and the theo-
retical approach of IMP (industrial marketing and purchasing), telling us how
deeper university–industry relationships can be developed. The reviewed
concepts and models are finally brought together into a theoretical framework
used as a background for this article.

Mode 1 and 2 interaction patterns of universities

Innovations emerge when new knowledge finds applications and thus
becomes utilized by users (Tidd, Bessant and Pavitt 2001). Universities can
assume different roles in the processes and systems of innovation. The so
called Mode 1 of universities (Gibbons et al. 1994) means that universities
contribute discipline-bound discoveries in a traditional way without consider-
ing their applications and following a sequential process reflected in the linear
commercialization funnel (Clarysse et al. 2005). Mode 2 describes a university
setting where knowledge production is organized around a particular applica-
tion and relevant need of society (Gibbons et al. 1994), which demands more
social accountability. The knowledge producers have to move from a focus
on the values of peer academicians to those of stakeholders outside academia
(Carayannis and Campbell, 2010).

Open innovation in a university context: Inspirations from the

IMP approach
The open innovation paradigm is stressing how firms use external ideas in
interactions with users and other sources of knowledge to create new prod-
ucts and services (Chesbrough 2003). In this context, universities can assume
the role of an important source of external knowledge for industry and a
potentially relevant partner in innovation even if there are several barriers
and hinders to overcome such as diverging cultures and difficulties in creat-
ing long-term and deep relationships (Håkansson and Snehota 1995; Plewa,
Quester and Baaken 2005; Plewa and Quester 2007; Jonsson et al. 2015).

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The IMP approach gives a theoretical perspective that accounts for this
complex and demanding nature of innovation-related interactions and
stresses how the business landscape is imbued by interdependence across
organizational borders (Håkansson et al. 2009). According to the IMP
approach companies are very selective in whom they choose to collabo-
rate with for innovation and tend not to change their preferred partners
(Håkansson and Waluszewski 2007) in the network which creates a thresh-
old for any external invention. An invention must prove benefits in all three
settings of users, producers and developers to be accepted and able to reach
the market. Furthermore, companies normally prefer customers and regular
suppliers as their partners for R&D collaborations and seldom a university
(Håkansson 1989).

Theoretical framework
For approaching the question how a broadened university innovation support
organization including academic engagement should be working, it is thus
important to understand that even if university–industry collaborations prin-
cipally represent an ideal match, they are not the norm in practice, and will
probably not happen automatically. Baraldi et al. (2013) identify a typology
of university–industry interactions based on increasing depth, intensity and
importance for the parties: from shallow ‘contacts’ (a simple acquaintance),
to ‘participation’ in meetings and discussions (with minimal exchange of
resources), to actual ‘cooperation’ (entailing knowledge exchange and joint
activities), to deeper ‘collaborations’ (entailing closer combinations of resources
towards a common goal) and, finally, to full-blown ‘relationships’, character-
ized by interaction episodes repeated over the long term, resource adaptations
and high levels of interdependence (Baraldi et al. 2013). In order to move along
this ideal ladder there are several barriers that need to be overcome, such as
divergent motives and time orientation between academia and industry, differ-
ent cultures, languages and core values (Plewa et al. 2005; Plewa and Quester
2007). Therefore, whenever deeper interactions emerge or are created, we can
expect that some elements have intervened to help the parties overcome those
barriers. Intermediary offices such as an industrial liaison office (ILO) and/or
a TTO are not simply a ‘switch-board’ making connections but can act as
‘representatives’ of the perceptions, ideas and expectations of one group to
the other and thus act as ‘knowledge brokers’. This will make it possible to
facilitate a movement and transformation of knowledge between the two
principal actors, the university researchers and the companies representatives
(Wright et al. 2008; Meyer 2010: 121–3). University management’s TTOs and
ILOs can contribute to build trust between academic researchers and industry
if they hold a credibility and legitimacy of their own, based on control over
relevant skills and resources and recruitment policies, reflecting the profes-
sionalization of third-stream support functions occurred since the late 1990s
(Wright et  al.  2008). The university management can also deploy specific
interaction-stimulating tools, such as particular meeting forums, project formats,
incentivizing schemes and organizational structures, which aim to create one
or several typologies of university–industry interactions (Baraldi et al. 2013).
Jonsson et al. (2015) have depicted the key compounds reviewed in this
section in the theoretical framework showed in Figure 1. This theoretical
framework stresses the importance of trust between the individual researcher,
the company representative and the innovation support officer acting as an

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Figure 1: A theoretical framework over university–industry interactions (from Jonsson et al. 2015).

intermediary actor in the process. Further, it also indicates the ladder of differ-
ent depths in the relationship described by Baraldi et al. (2013).

Research methods
Our methodology is a qualitative longitudinal case study (Yin 1994) conducted
over the development of the innovation-supporting structure and organi-
zational unit of Uppsala University, Sweden, during the period 1998–2013.
Two of this article’s authors have been part of the managerial team from its
onset and been directly involved in building and developing the structure
described. The method employed can be described as participant observation
for fifteen years, within an ‘action research’ design (Levin and Greenwood
2001). These two writers have participated in most activities of the studied
units and collected different kinds of data such as economic reports, partici-
pation surveys and comments from internal and external stakeholders over
the years. As a way to counterbalance the risk of bias of action research, the
third author of this article is a senior academic researcher conducting research
programs in the areas of commercialization of science and academic engage-
ment. This author is involved in a larger research project started in 2009 which
compares the innovation strategies of three Swedish universities, the other
two being the Karolinska Institute and Mid-Sweden University and in this
context have had access to multiple sources of data. Collected between 2009
and 2014, these data from multiple sources include over 40 direct observations
and participations to the tools and activities developed by Uppsala University’s
innovation-supporting unit, over 80 qualitative in-depth interviews with repre-
sentatives from all the involved organizations (including companies and
academic researchers), one survey administered to a populations of over 1000
researchers and industry representatives, and a large amount of documents (e.g.
applications, strategic plans, project plans, project meeting minutes, brochures
and other information materials). As a way to counterbalance the risk of bias
and self-referencing of action research, it is the other author of this article
who has been conducting the analysis of the empirical materials and espe-
cially of the experiential insights provided by the authors belonging to Uppsala
University’s innovation units. Data about the activities of PISOs were derived

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primarily from about twenty interviews (conducted between 2009 and 2013)
and the direct experience of the authors who have recruited and lead these
officers during the studied period. Data about AIMday* were derived from
23  in-depth interviews, informal discussions with PISOs about AIMday and
its development and 13 semi-structured interviews with participating compa-
nies and academic researchers. Furthermore, the researcher not connected to
the ISU of the university, participated as an observer to six different AIMdays
and five planning meetings. Next to this qualitative data, an online survey
was addressed in 2013 to all 1118 participants in the first twenty AIMdays
in order to probe their attitudes towards AIMday and trace its effects. Data
about the special project SMURF derives from a total of 40 interviews, 20 with
partaking SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises) and 20 with academic
researchers, 17 participant observations to project meetings in 2012–14, as
well as full access to all project documentation.

Findings
This section reviews the key components in the strategy of our reference
case, Uppsala University, to promote knowledge exchange with external
actors and the results and effects which have emerged from this strategy. A
further important result, namely the amount of external funding obtained by
UU Holding and UUI to finance their operations, is also reviewed, which can
also be considered as an important means to achieving these results. Finally a
rough cost-benefit calculation of the innovation support at Uppsala University
is presented.

Key components of the strategy used at Uppsala University

When studying the evolvement of the ISU at Uppsala University, a set of
strategic choices stand out as key elements that greatly influenced the results
during the period we examined. These choices concern (1) the alignment with
selected goals and activities of strategic value to the university, (2) the recruit-
ment strategy to man the innovation-supporting office, (3) the building of
trust and (4) specific tools and activities introduced to support innovation and
knowledge exchange. These strategic key elements will be described in more
detail below.

Alignment with the main goals and activities of the university

The management group of the ISU at Uppsala University decided short after
the establishment of the support units, not only to create value for external
organizations and society, but also to create value for the faculties and the
management of the university. These values included the prestige derived
from start-up companies, profitable exits and out-licensing deals, and match-
ing innovation efforts with key university goals, such as managing collabo-
rative research on a high academic level. This was intended to attract more
research funds, the best professors and the best students.

A recruitment strategy for promoting efficient interactions

From the start, the ISU at Uppsala University was staffed with external recruit-
ments possessing double competences. Six of the first seven PISOs recruited,
all combined a Ph.D. with experience from managerial positions in business
or healthcare. They all understood the driving forces within academia as well

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as those in the external organizations, which gave them the ability to identify
important challenges to be addressed. It also affirmed their trustworthiness
by the university management, university faculties and external organiza-
tions. Therefore, they were effective in solving stakeholders’ issues and could
also act as mediators and ‘diplomats’ when needed. The experience and posi-
tion of these people also made them very capable in organizing efficient and
timely meetings.

Building trust
The broadened focus included not only start-ups and out-licensing deals,
but also large collaboration projects and increased funding, together with
the double experience of most of the PISOs, gained the trust of the research-
ers because it was more sympathetic to their needs. The innovation support
organization at Uppsala University is today viewed by both the faculty and
management, as contributing value to academic research and education. A
general survey in 2013 among all researchers and Ph.D. students at Uppsala
University showed that the share of respondents who had a personal expe-
rience from working with the ISU had increased four times since the previ-
ous survey in 2010, from 7 per cent to 28 per cent. Furthermore, those who
had a personal experience of working with the ISU also expressed great
confidence in the abilities of the PISOs, finding the meetings both efficient
and valuable and 95 per cent of them would recommend their colleagues
to contact them if needed (Mattsson 2011, 2013). Considering the fact that
using the ISU is not mandatory in Sweden but an open option, this must be
regarded as a proof of high confidence in the value of the work of the PISOs
at the ISU.

Results and effects

As many of the activities initiated and managed by UUI have an open-ended
goal, namely ‘creating academia-industry relationships’, it is difficult to meas-
ure their results and effects. Many activities evaluate their own perform-
ance by means of both ‘soft indicators’, such as participants’ satisfaction, and
numerical metrics, such as the number of participants (firms and researchers),
the number of meetings arranged, and the number of ideas pursued after
a meeting (see Baraldi et al. 2013; Baraldi et al. 2014; Jonsson et al. 2014a).
Nevertheless, it is hard to follow up which actual collaboration projects
emerge out of the meetings, as neither researchers nor companies have a
duty to report them. In trying to produce and measure more concrete results
of meetings and the mediating role of ISU, some of the reviewed activities
now also offer initial funding for researchers and external organizations who
present the most interesting R&D project proposals, thereby increasing the
traceability of the resulting collaborations.
Our review of the results of the aforementioned activities starts with
the most common indicators of TTOs’ performance, namely the ordinary
numbers of the spin-out funnel; then we move to the participation in the
activities of the ISU, values obtained from the so called AIMday concept,
actual collaborations, the results from supporting the scientific domain of
humanities and social sciences, research programmes with external funding
achieved and finally the innovation support system connected to Uppsala
University.

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Results of the traditional commercialization process

During the studied period of our reference case, the result of the traditional
spin-out funnel at Uppsala University was very successful. A total of 72 start-up
companies were founded during the years 1998–2013 with the involvement of
UU Holding, 17 exits occurred, 11 investments were terminated through liqui-
dation and 4 companies went bankrupt during the period. The equity value
of UU Holding increased through profitable exits from about €1 million at
start, to €7.8 million including the running costs and deduction of losses due
to failed companies. This includes a shareholders’ contribution of €1 million
given by the government in 2010. In addition, the portfolio companies were,
based upon the last price for new shares issued, assessed to have a market
value of about €8.6 million, exceeding the book value by almost €5.4 million.
The total net value created can thus be estimated to be about €11.2 million
including the values that have not yet been realized. The work performed by
UU Holding also created a lot of contacts both within the university and in the
business society, which could be exploited when the broadened strategy was
implemented from year 2007.

Number of researchers and companies participating in the ISU’s

activities
The different activities organized by the innovation support organization have
gained more attention both from faculty and from business representatives.
Participating in such activities is a first step towards cooperation and concrete
collaborations (Baraldi et al. 2013). Today, over 1300 researchers and about
1000 representatives from about 400 companies and external organizations
are involved yearly. About half of the companies participating are SMEs. This
can be compared to 75 researchers and less than 50 company representatives
from 12 companies in 2009, of which only a few were SMEs.
Attending the activities is a step in the ladder depicted in Figure 1. The
researchers and the representatives from the external organizations get to
know each other and the PISOs arranging the activity, and trust can start to
be built. The increased number of participants both among the academicians
and among companies and external organizations is an indication in the trust
of the arrangements and the PISOs heading them.

Values obtained from AIMday

The so called AIMday-concept developed at Uppsala University has been a
huge success and has spread to other Swedish universities as well as inter-
nationally. The concept contains a specially designed one-day meeting with
a preparatory process that has shown to create a fruitful win-win meeting
between researchers and external companies and public organizations. The
AIMday concept has been evidenced to be equally successful in all scientific
domains (Jonsson et al. 2015). It creates new contacts and enables science to
become more useful to practitioners and also helps solving concrete problems
in some cases. In the performed following up survey in year 2013, two-thirds
of the responding academics attest to the fact that the concept helps them to
better understand the challenges faced by practitioners. Also concrete collab-
orations have started as a result of these one-day meetings. In the case of
Uppsala University, AIMday has been used both for supporting and broaden-
ing long-lasting industrial relationships in the area of material science, and for
creating new contacts.

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The structured and focused discussions led by a trained chairman will help
to build a common understanding of the issues brought to the table by the
companies and different ways to attack the problems can be discussed. In this
way the AIMday will help to overcome cultural and language hinders between
the university researchers and the representatives from companies and exter-
nal organizations and a further trust can be built. For a better description and
more in-depth analysis of the AIMday-concept, see Baraldi et al. (2013) and
Jonsson et al. (2015).

Actual industry–academia collaborations started

The innovation support organization has also been successful in setting up
actual collaborations. Presently, a total of 38 collaborative projects have been
started in the field of material science. From being research-focused, the
collaboration in this area has also evolved into the field of education, covering
more and more aspects of the knowledge triangle (Maassen and Stensaker
2011). For instance, in 2011–2013, 23 student projects were performed where
engineering students ran laboratory projects at the partnering companies and
company representatives were used as teachers in seminars at the university.
In a special project, called SMURF, 32 different projects with a total of 28
SME companies were created during the period 2011–2013, resulting in new
products, new production methods and/or new services in several cases. For
more details, see Jonsson et al. (2014a, 2015).
To actually start a collaboration is yet another step on the ladder depicted
in Figure 1. You start to exchange information and also commit different kind
of resources. A prerequisite for such exchange is trust in each other.

Innovation support for humanities and social science

A vast majority of the values created so far at Uppsala University has been
created in the scientific domains of medicine, pharmacy, science and tech-
nology. Those are also the domains which usually are connected with tradi-
tional technology transfer. However, at Uppsala University a special work
began in the year 2009 to also involve the scientific domains of humanities
and social sciences in the activities of ISU. By using the Oslo definition of
innovation (OECD 2005), much of the external interactions already going on
in this scientific area by the faculties themselves could be shown to actually
be an innovation support work using academic engagement. This made the
nomenclature less threatening to the researchers and opened up for a closer
interaction using the PISOs.
In the scientific domain of humanities and social sciences, the external
partners are more often public organizations than pure companies and the
innovations are more likely to be new processes for schools, social work and
tourism rather than physical manufactured products. From this perspective, it
has been shown in our reference case that most tools developed to support
the academic engagement in the more ‘hard’ scientific fields can also be used
in the domain of humanities and social sciences.
The promising results of this special focus upon humanities and social
sciences which can be seen so far are a higher engagement among the
researchers in the activities of the ISU and new research grants awarded to
projects initiated by the ISU’s activities from foundations who normally only
support research in the medical field. Also some new business ideas linked
to these activities have been taken care of by UU Holding and its business

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incubator UIC. A start-up company from the department of law has created
a method to support unemployed people with high academic qualifications
and, together with the university, give them demand-driven practical educa-
tion. This company has shown great results, both in helping its customers into
employment and also financially and has already given UU Holding dividends
which totally sum up to twelve times the investment made.

Research programmes with external funding achieved

One of the goals with the strategy of the innovation support organization
at Uppsala University is to let the PISOs be actively involved in, and some-
times drive, the work regarding selected grant applications. During the period
1998–2013, a number of external research grants have been awarded Uppsala
University where the initiative and/or assistance by the ISU before and during
the application phase are judged to be important or very important. In addi-
tion to several minor projects, the most important ones are the massive EU
projects Bridge (started 2009), InnoEnergy (started in 2011) and Enable (finally
approved by the European Commission in May 2014) which together with the
national strategic research programs have contributed to well over €50 million
funding to the university. After the end of this studied period, additional large
international programmes such as EIT Health have been granted with Uppsala
University as one major player and in which the PISOs have contributed.

Development of the innovation support system connected with

the university
The overall strategy pursued by the innovation support organization at Uppsala
University is to develop a fertile eco-system for innovations at the university
and in the surrounding network (Hwang 2012). The organization has there-
fore initiated and spun out several initiatives, such as Uppsala Bio, a ‘life
science pathfinder’ run in close collaboration with industry, academia, soci-
ety and healthcare. It has also contributed to founding of the support organi-
zation for students with business ideas, Drivhuset, which has supported the
creation of almost 800 student companies since its start in the year 2000. UU
Holding was also one of the three founders, and is still one of four owners, to
the successful business incubator UIC, which today runs a variety of business
incubation programs in Uppsala and Södertälje, a city south of Stockholm.
This incubator was recently ranked as one of globally top 25 university-related
business incubators by the organization UBI Index.

Innovation support funding from external sources

External awarded funds for innovation support can be viewed both as a result
of the activities and as a prerequisite for being able to sustain the aforemen-
tioned support activities. In the year 2013, external sources constituted about
two-thirds of the total running costs of UU Holding and UU Innovation and so
far €12.8 million have been secured from external sources for the implementa-
tion of the broadened strategy introduced in 2007 and quite even distributed
over the years 2007–2014.

A rough cost-benefit estimation

The running cost of the traditional spin-out funnel during the period
1995–2013 has already been taken into account when these activities were

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estimated to have gained a profit of €11.2 million (see separate Section). Since
it started in 2007, the running cost of UU Innovation, the unit supporting the
academic engagement channels, has been €14.9 million, most of it covered
by external grants and about €7.0 million covered by the university’s internal
budget. During the whole studied period 1998–2013, the cost for the inno-
vation support carried by the university’s own budget was €8.9 million. As
mentioned earlier, the PISOs have contributed to over €50 million in new
research grants to the university. Even if it is more or less impossible to
know how much of this sum is the explicit result of the work of the PISOs, a
contribution referring to less than 15 per cent of the sum would be enough
to balance the university’s part of the running cost of UU Innovation. In addi-
tion, a lot of other values of more ‘soft’ qualities have been generated. Those
values are difficult to quantify especially since collaborations may reveal their
values only over the coming years and often are embedded in other processes
and difficult to codify.

Discussion
Our discussion of the findings from the case revolves around our research
questions: to understand if and how mutual benefits can be achieved by having
a professional managed innovation support organization at the university,
working with a holistic approach supporting both the traditionally spin-out
funnel (Clarysse and Moray 2004) and the academic engagement (Perkmann
et al. 2013).
Our case shows that managing interactive knowledge exchange is
grounded in four basic elements: (1) strategic alignment of the innova-
tion supporting structure with broader goals and activities of the university;
(2) recruitment of professionals with both academic and industrial competence
and experience, which in turn enables (3) building trust towards and between
researchers and practitioners and (4) devising efficient interaction-stimulating
mechanisms and tools that provide real value to the involved parties.
Of these four key elements, the importance of building trust cannot be
underestimated. In fact, a large body of literature about inter-organizational
relationships indicate that trust plays a key role in the development of shallow
interactions into deeper ones (Håkansson and Snehota 1995; Ford et al. 2003;
Plewa and Quester 2007). And building trust appears in our reference case as
an important means to achieving the expected effect. But building trust can
also be viewed as an intermediate effect which can be created by the second
element in our framework, namely the recruitment of the double-competent
professionals we termed PISOs.
Previous research has shown that it is important for those who will gain
value from the relationship with external partner to also engage in develop-
ing collaborations with those partners (Plewa and Quester 2007). A usual
difficulty in developing university–industry collaborations is the lack of confi-
dence from both parties that they will actually benefit from the collaboration.
Faculties often regard the industry’s goals as getting ‘cheap consultancy’,
resulting in a one-way direction of knowledge transfer from academicians
to the industry. Industry often suspects that academicians see companies as
‘cash machines’ who only want money for their own academic research with-
out really delivering value to industry. This lack of trust makes both parties
unwilling to invest in future collaboration, which requires attending meetings
or engaging in the often time-consuming preparation phase of a multipartner

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collaboration program. In our reference case, the recruitment of the double

competent professional innovation support officers, once again, has built the
necessary trust to overcome these hinders.
The effects emerging from such a management system can be significant
and range from participation in activities to changed attitudes among academi-
cians and practitioners, from classical spin-outs and patents to external research
grants, from simple contacts to deeper industry–academia collaboration projects,
and from organizational changes in the external innovation-supporting system
to actual employments and regional growth. In our study, we found an increase
in participations from both academicians and representatives from external
organizations, a steady stream of new ventures based upon research results,
as well as collaborative projects, and an evolution in the organizational struc-
ture constituting the innovation support eco-system surrounding Uppsala
University.
It is also clear that in practice the effects of the different activi-
ties performed by the PISOs cannot be easily separated from each other
as they are strongly interlinked. For instance, it is unlikely that a deep
and durable relationship immediately appears ‘alone’ (Håkansson and
Snehota 1995). One can instead trace the following chain of effects:
‘participation – contacts – cooperation – collaboration – relationships – financial
resources – economic growth’ (cf. Baraldi et al. 2013), which can be regarded
as an academic engagement funnel (Jonsson et al. 2014b). A key issue of enquiry
then is which elements enable the chain to progress towards deeper and more
durable interactions. As mentioned earlier, mutual trust seems to be a key
element. Also different tools, allowing both formal and informal meetings on
a regular basis, seem to be important to actually make the contacts progress
into deeper and more durable interactions (Jonsson et al. 2014a, 2015).
While there might be a risk that universities lose their identity when profes-
sionals within the university who are non-faculty people assume more power,
this trend can also indicate a professionalization of the innovation support
structure to increase the value created for the university and its external coun-
terparts. By relying on PISOs operating in the intersection industry–academia,
mutual trust can be built and all parties will benefit from the collaboration.
Taking our reference case, it is obvious that it is not single events per se that
enable the effects, but it takes a considerable amount of work by the PISOs to
gain the trust of researchers and industry representative, and this trust must
be established before all parties start believing in the value of collaborations.
From the figures depicted in the findings, estimation shows that the cost
for broadening the professional innovation support work at Uppsala University
can be justified. The traditional commercialization shows a net profit of about
€11.2 million including running costs and deduction of losses from failed
investments. This figure includes also values which have not yet been real-
ized giving them some uncertainty. The experience from the exits that have
taken place in the company portfolio of UU Holding reveals that these unre-
alized values can be both under- and over-estimated. The professional inno-
vation support for academic engagement shows a net running cost for the
university of about €7.0 million during the period while the contribution only
in new research grants is estimated to be well over €50 million. Even if it is
almost impossible to judge how much of this value can be referred explicitly
to the work done of the PISOs, a mean contribution of less than 15 per cent
of the secured external grants would be enough to counterbalance the cost. In
addition, several more ‘soft values’ will be achieved for the university as such

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and for the involved research groups such as expanded networks, prestige and
attractiveness for new researchers and students, which are very difficult to
value in money. We therefor dare to say that in our reference case, this invest-
ment from the university has already paid off.
Our results, showing an increased number of researchers from all fields
working with the PISOs, also indicate that a broader strategy for innovation
support seems to appeal better to the fields of humanity and social science
compared to the traditional spin-out funnel. Including these parts of the
scientific domains is important, both for the internal acceptance of the ISU
and the PISOs at the university and for making sure that all kinds of values
created at the university can be transferred and used by the society.
An important finding in our study is that it seems as if the linear spin-
out funnel (Clarysse et al. 2005) and academic engagement (Perkmann et al.
2013) are not mutually exclusive strategies, but can indeed support each other.
The ISU at Uppsala University started almost twenty years ago with a total
focus upon the traditional commercialization funnel. The professional support
to more indirect innovation activities within the academic engagement has
become more and more important at the university over the last decade
and today constitutes at least 50 per cent of the total resources in the ISU.
Still, the spin-out track remains a sort of ‘show window’ of the university,
which grants visibility and legitimacy to the innovation support system. In
fact, being successful with patent support, spin-offs and specific exits not only
provided financial resources to UU Holding, but also enhanced its reputation
and resulted in a great deal of contacts, both inside and outside the univer-
sity, which were exploited when implementing the proactive and interactive
strategy. In other words, pursuing the linear spin-out funnel strategy not only
provided economic resources, but also contributed to embedding UU Holding
and UUI in the industrial network (Håkansson and Snehota 1995), which is
a prerequisite for the knowledge created at Uppsala University to be really
exploited by external parties (Håkansson and Waluszewski 2007; Baraldi and
Launberg 2013).

Challenges
A major challenge when creating a holistic system for innovation support, such
as the one operating at Uppsala University, is to convince the government,
external funding organizations and the university management of the value
of professional support not only in the spin-out funnel but also in academic
engagement. In our reference case, this happened gradually, over several
years, through repeated discussions with influential researchers, university
managers and external financiers, using statistical data and scientific literature
to support the argument that such professional support was needed and the
cost for running it should be regarded as an investment. Another challenge is
the recruitment of right employees and offering them attractive salaries. As for
Uppsala University, it could exploit the major restructuring in the local indus-
try, making several senior managers with Ph.D. degrees interested in coming
back to their alma mater and use their business experiences for the benefit of
their previous faculty colleagues.
It is easy to understand that a university needs to have adequate scientific
development and be able to generate interesting new knowledge to become
a key actor in today’s knowledge-based economy. But, as important is prob-
ably the absorptive capacity of its surroundings. If the companies and other

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Lars Jonsson | Enrico Baraldi | Lars-Eric Larsson

organizations surrounding the university lack the absorptive capacity to take

care of the new knowledge generated by the university and transform into
new innovations, the effect of the university as a key-actor will be of less
importance compared to a university surrounded by organizations with a high
absorptive capacity. This important factor is often overlooked by politicians
and policy-makers trying to push more innovations out of the universities or
comparing the impact in the society of different universities. Furthermore, it
has not been so well addressed in the scientific literature. In a knowledge-
based economic eco-system, the university probably has a key role but will
still be depended upon the efficiency and capacity of other actors like inves-
tors, the bank system and the profile and performance of existing companies.
Friedman and Silberman (2003) found that the absorption capacity, as defined
in the study, was four to six times higher in the region surrounding San José
in the Silicon Valley as compared to the regions of Dallas or Boston, which, in
their turn, was found to be four times higher than the region surrounding the
median US university. Similar differences were also found to be one reason
for the different outputs from the innovation support organizations in Estonia
and Sweden (Kelli et al. 2014). Our reference case can profit from being situ-
ated in an area where the absorptive capacity of the surrounding society is
estimated to be higher than what is normal for most universities. The great
Stockholm region, in which Uppsala is situated, has in several rankings been
regarded as one of the globally top innovation regions, several times ranked as
an ‘innovation leader’ in the Regional Innovation Score Board of the European
Commission (2014).
Every region wants be a new Silicon Valley, but very few, if any, will reach
that goal. Instead of trying to copy what is working in Silicon Valley, it is better
to try to find inspiration in different systems that have been built up at differ-
ent universities and regions, and then adjust them to your own context. The
lesson learned from our reference case is that this development will proba-
bly be an evolution where things are added and adjusted interactively with
the surrounding organizations and society using a BOA management model
(Jonsson et al. 2014b) where the organization is continuously built, operated
and analysed in a revolving pattern to adjust to its surroundings and also to
changes in the prerequisites that might occur over time (Jonsson et al. 2014b).

Summary and conclusion

The utilization of research results and knowledge gained at the universities is
an important source to enhance economic growth in the society. This can be
not only by out-licensing deals of university-filed patents and the creation of
new ventures in the spin-out funnel, but also through academic engagements
in different interactive processes like conferences, collaborations and publica-
tions. While the spin-out funnel has received professional support to enhance
its effects in most western universities, much less attention has been paid to
the possibility to enhance the effects of the academic engagement by profes-
sional support. The traditional approach to the knowledge transfer process
views the university solely as a provider of knowledge and the industry and
society as receivers. However, the academicians involved will also gain insights
and sometimes even knowledge, which can be used to increase the quality of
their academic research (Ranga, Debackere and von Tunzelmann 2003). Thus,
the universities are not only providers but are also users of knowledge from
external interacting partners.

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In this article we show that broadening professional innovation support to

also include academic engagement creates mutual benefits for both the univer-
sity management, the faculties involved and the external partners. Making a
rough cost-benefit analysis, it seems to be worth the cost for the university and
we therefore recommend that universities broaden the mission of their inno-
vation support units to include academic engagement channels. Since many
results of academic engagement are indirect, manifested at unexpected places
and require time to emerge (Pavitt 2004; Håkansson and Waluszewski 2007),
they are difficult to trace and a lot still needs to be codified. More research
is therefore needed to fully understand the impact over time by profession-
ally managed innovation support units with a holistic approach at universities.
Also the effect of the absorption capacity of the society in which the university
is embedded and how this may influence the impact made by the university
is a field where more research is needed. We recommend that the indica-
tors used can capture the broad range of values created for several groups of
participants in specific events and other stakeholders: for instance individual
researchers, research leaders, heads of departments, faculty deans, university
administrators, SMEs, large companies, direct licensees, start-ups, final users
and, not least, students. Also, the timeframe for tracing results and effects will
need to be expanded from the current one to five years in order to embrace
the complex and long-term dynamics of innovation, which typically extends
over decades.

*AIMday is a trademark registered by Uppsala University, Sweden.

Acknowledgement
The authors want to thank the Ph.D. students Petter Bengtsson Forsberg and
Kristofer Severinsson for their help in gathering together the material and
participating in the interviews used for this article.

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Suggested citation
Jonsson, L., Baraldi, E. and Larsson L.-E. (2015), ‘A broadened innovation
support for mutual benefits: Academic engagement by universities as part
of technology transfer’, International Journal of Technology Management &
Sustainable Development, 14: 2, pp. 71–91, doi: 10.1386/tmsd.14.2.71_1

Contributor details
Lars O. Jonsson, M.D. and Ph.D., born 1952, is an Associate Professor in
Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care at Uppsala University, Sweden. He
worked as a clinical physician from 1978 to 1992, and Hospital Director from
1993 to 1998. In parallel he was a clinical researcher in medicine during
the years 1986–1998 with more than 40 publications in international peer-
reviewed journals and conference proceedings. During these years, he filed a
patent application and started a spin-off company together with his former
supervisor. In 1988 he was a Visiting Professor at the University of Western
Ontario, London, Canada. He became the Managing Director of UU Holding
Company in 1998, a for-profit organization at the Uppsala University, a
position he still holds. He has been involved in the evaluation of more than
1000 research-based ideas and the formation of about 80 start-up companies

90
 A broadened innovation support for mutual benefits

from Uppsala University. He has also been responsible for creating a profes-
sional innovation support organization within the university and was the
Head of UU Innovation from its start in 2007 until October 2013.
Contact: UU Holding, Science Park, S-751 83 Uppsala, Sweden.
E-mail: lars.jonsson@holding.uu.se

Enrico Baraldi, born 1970, is Full Professor of Industrial Engineering and

Management at Uppsala University, Sweden. He also holds professorial
competence in the following disciplines: Business Studies, Innovation Studies,
Industrial Innovation, Entrepreneurship and International Business. Since
1998, he has conducted multidisciplinary research in the fields of industrial
marketing, innovation management, commercialization and entrepreneur-
ship, business strategies and science and technology studies. Baraldi has
published over 40 peer-reviewed works including articles in such journals as
California Management Review, Journal of Business Research, Industrial Marketing
Management, and Technovation. In 2014, together with a multinational team
of over forty researchers, Enrico initiated the large multidisciplinary project
‘DRIVE-AB’ (€6.3 million), aiming to develop, test and implement new busi-
ness models promoting the development and responsible use of antibiotics in
order to face the problem of bacterial multi-resistance.
Outside academia, Baraldi was Scandinavia Area Manager for the publisher
Panini/Marvel, started three companies within management consulting, web
development and genetic analysis. Next to several assignments as an ongo-
ing evaluator of EU projects, he has been an advisor to MIUN Innovation at
the Mid-Sweden University and UU Innovation on innovation strategies and
matters of technology transfer, academic engagement and industrial liaisons.
Contact: Industrial Engineering & Management, Department of Engineering
Sciences, Uppsala University, P.O. Box 534, S-751 21 Uppsala, Sweden.
E-mail: enrico.baraldi@angstrom.uu.se

Lars-Eric Larsson, born in 1949, received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry at Uppsala

University in 1977, and his thesis was elaborated in close collaboration with
a pharmaceutical company. After a couple of years as a post doc he joined
the pharmaceutical industry in 1979. During the following 21 years he held a
number of managerial positions, in the fields of Business Area Management,
Project Management, Business Development, Quality Management, Product
Development, in the pharmaceutical company Pharmacia and participated in
seven company mergers and acquisitions. In the year 2000 he was appointed
Managing Director at Uppsala University Industrial Liaison Company, and
joined Uppsala University Innovation as Deputy Director in 2007 when the
unit was started, a position he still holds. In addition he is at present also a
Senior Advisor, Innovation and Collaboration at Uppsala University.
Contact: UU Innovation, Science Park, S-751 83 Uppsala, Sweden.
E-mail: lars-eric.larssondi@uuinnovation.uu.se

Lars Jonsson, Enrico Baraldi and Lars-Eric Larsson have asserted their right
under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the
authors of this work in the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

91
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Explorations in Media
Ecology
ISSN 15397785 | Online ISSN 20480717
4 issues per volume | Volume 12, 2013

EME explores the relationships between media, technology, symbolic form, Editor
communication, consciousness, and culture. Its scope is interdisciplinary Paul Grosswiler
and multidisciplinary. Media ecology provides a rich philosophical, historical University of Maine
and practical context for studying our increasingly technological and medi- paul_grosswiler@umit.maine.edu
ated society and culture with an emphasis on historical context.
Pedagogy editor
Media ecology scholarship emphasizes a humanistic approach to under- Catherine Adams
standing media, communication, and technology, with special emphasis on University of Alberta
the ways in which we have been and continue to be shaped and influenced cathy.adams@ualberta.ca
by our inventions and innovation. The Media ecology approach is predicated
on understanding that media, symbols, and technologies play a leading role Review editor
in human affairs, and function as largely invisible environments affecting Brian Cogan
the way we think, feel, act, and organize ourselves collectively. Molloy College
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Explorations in Media Ecology (EME) is the Journal of the Media Ecology
Association .

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