This How to guide explores practical ways to create and develop a positive relationship between universities and businesses, showcasing diverse and innovative forms of collaboration. Kathy Daniels and Saskia Loer Hansen bring together expert insights from across the world to demonstrate that business engagement is a wide-ranging and essential part of the modern university.

The study of universities’ role in regional engagement has traditionally been focusing on exceptional cases. This book presents a reconceptualization which embraces its underlying complexity and proposes a roadmap for a renewed research agenda. Starting from the grassroots level of universities’ everyday engagements, the book delves into the manifold ways in which university knowledge agents build connections with regional partners. Through 11 empirical chapters, the authors not only chart the diversity among case institutions, engagement mechanisms, and regional contexts but also use that diversity to advance a novel conceptual framework, centered on the process of mundaneness, for unpacking university-regions’ everyday activities, taking into account the dynamic, complex, and co-evolving interplay between (a) key social agents and institutions, (b) the contexts in which they are embedded, as well as (c) the historical trajectories and strategic ambitions underpinning context-specific social arrangements and interactions that are mediated by temporal and spatial dimensions. Drawing on evolutionary economic geography, innovation studies, management and organization studies, and historical perspectives, the volume advances a new mode of understanding university-regional engagement as a form of extendable temporary coupling, which also helps to address perennial policy and managerial questions alike of what to do with universities that do not serve local labour market needs and/or are located in regions suffering from brain drain. The book illustrates such dynamics from diverse national contexts and three continents: Brazil, Caribbean, China, Italy, Norway, and Poland. This book will be valuable reading for advanced students, researchers, and policymakers working in economic geography, regional development, innovation, and higher education management. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

To meet the challenge of closing the gap between academic research and industry practice, we need a step change in how the business school and the business scholar engages with business. This book presents best practice in the methods of broadening successful academic–business engagement on a major scale. It presents concrete recommendations for setting programmes, creating incentives and structuring recruitment that will transform effective academic–business engagement. Most universities claim to have significant links with industry and the professions, but, in reality, only a limited number of business scholars are engaged with industry. A focus on ‘impact’ presents an additional potential trap, confusing promotion of research and tactical tips and tricks, with genuine engagement. This book explores the increasing number of new and innovative partnerships and collaborative activities, and looks at how academics can adapt to and leverage these new opportunities. It focuses on the academic as the primary driver of the external relationship and outlines the skills and capabilities needed to proactively develop engagement. Finally, the book provides a number of examples of best practice from a range of countries. Written by senior business scholars and leaders from around the world, and with examples of best practice included from leading universities, this book gives universities the insight needed to develop a broader range of relationships with businesses and to have genuine engagement and impact in practice.

Universities and Engagement is a timely and insightful book that examines what universities can contribute to their communities and economies through lifelong learning, a topic which is of increasing importance to Higher Education Institutions across the world. The book will offer an answer to the question ‘What can be understood by University Lifelong Learning today?’ by collating the work of specialists from across Europe and beyond who have first-hand experience in the field of university engagement through continuing education. With a diverse range of expertise from the UK, Ireland, Germany, Finland, Malta, Belgium, New Zealand, Austria and the USA, readers are guaranteed a varied and informative collection of perspectives on this important topic. Taken as a whole, the book provides a theoretical background for readers, drawing on recent research and practice examples from a variety of countries and institutional settings, as well as demonstrating a variety of conceptual approaches, confirming the diverse range of possible solutions. Key topics covered include: research into policy and practice; engaging with business and industry; engaging with communities; engaging with an ageing society; active citizenship and regional competitiveness. Developed in collaboration with the European University Continuing Education Network (EUCEN), Universities and Engagement is an invaluable contribution to research in the subject of lifelong learning. It will be of value to academics, practitioners and professionals with an interest in higher education and community management, and will be particularly suited to those interested in lifelong learning, adult education and community development.

Creating Engagement between Schools and their Communities: Lessons from Educational Leaders addresses how educational leaders have made efforts to reconnect their schools to their communities and the varied goals they achieved. The contributors of this book are educational leaders who have stayed committed to their neighborhoods and who have seen the moral imperative to provide equal opportunity to all students. This book shares their experiences, particularly looking at community-based schools in urban, impoverished, or immigrant communities—communities that often are disconnected from the political and economic centers of the country.

This volume provides insightful analysis of the way higher education engages with socially excluded communities. Leading researchers and commentators examine the validity of the claim that universities can be active facilitators of social mobility, opening access to the knowledge economy for formerly excluded groups. The authors assess the extent to which the ‘Academy’ can deliver on its promise to build bridges with communities whose young people often assume that higher education lies beyond their ambitions. The chapters map the core dynamics of the relationship between higher education and communities which have bucked the more general trend of rapidly rising student numbers. Contributors also take the opportunity to reflect on the potential impact of these dynamics on the evolution of the university’s role as a social institution. The volume was inspired by a symposium attended by a wide spectrum of participants, including government, senior university managers, academic researchers and community groups based in areas suffering from social exclusion. It makes a substantive contribution to an under-researched field, with authors seeking to both shape solutions as well as better diagnose the problem. Some chapters include valuable contextual analysis, using empirical data from North America, Europe and Australia to add substance to the debates on policy and theory. The volume seeks to offer a defining intellectual statement on the interaction between the concept of a ‘university’ and those communities historically missing from higher education participation, the volume deepens our understanding of what might characterise an ‘engaged’ university and strengthens the theoretical foundations of the topic.

This manual provides a framework to strategically think about and practice collaboration with others within and outside various disciplines. Aware of the different approaches in accordance with discipline, gender, and career goals, through case studies from lived experiences, the editors have compiled guidelines on: • How to start, build and maintain collaborative networks with diverse audiences, • The opportunities that exist internally and externally to networks, • How to resolve conflicts, overcome resistance, and build trust and confidence. With a wide scope in both content and reach, this book is a valuable resource for researchers, practitioners and their supporters alike, particularly those who are looking to engage with various audiences such as individuals, institutions, private companies, and governments.