Lessons learned. Further information. Section 1 / General information. Section 2 / Case study Profile. Section 3 / Implementation & funding

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Section 1 /

General information

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Section 2 /

Case study Profile

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Section 3 /

Implementation & funding

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Section 4 /

Outcomes & impact

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Section 5 /

Lessons learned

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Section 6 /

Further information

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General

information

Title of the case

Taking responsibility for growth and job creation; Co-location for co-creation

Sales pitch

An example of how a network university takes responsibility and lead in maintaining and developing important jobs – and an industry.

Organisation

Aalborg University

Country

Denmark

Date

February 2014

Authors

Morten Dahlgaard Jakob Stolt

Nature of interaction

 Collaboration in R&D

 Academic mobility

 Student mobility

 Commercialisation of R&D results in science

 Lifelong learning

 Curriculum development and delivery

 Entrepreneurship

 Governance

 Other

Supporting mechanism

 Strategic instrument

 Structural instrument or approach

 Operational activity

 Framework condition

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Case study written by Morten Dahlgaard & Jakob Stolt

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Case study

Profile

1. SUMMARY

In the light of an unhappy situation – the closing down of Nokia’s R&D department in Denmark – Aalborg University and Nokia together thought out a scheme of how to take advantage of the situation and instead try to sustain and create jobs in the ICT sector by forming a coalition of partners that would join forces as to maintain some of the activities and make use of the competencies present and the entrepreneurial spirit following the closing down.

Coincidences, luck and swift acting walked hand in hand as the windows of opportunity only were open for a short while. Due to Aalborg University Copenhagen’s rapid growth, the university was looking for new premises, and at the same time Nokia’s announcement of laying off approx. 1,000 employees (mainly engineers) made way for discussions of how the university could play a role in the future for the former Nokia-employees. Aalborg University being the biggest ICT-university in Denmark had already strong collaboration with Nokia, so the dialogue was natural and made to secure that competencies present could take advantage of a university and vice versa.

Nokia had an ambitious programme of getting their employees new jobs, but also providing Nokia staff with start-up ambitions substantial aid, support, grants and mentoring. This actually led to a very high amount of start-ups during the period of closing down which ran approximately 18 month until the last Nokia-employee left the buildings in March 2013. Top management at the university and Nokia together with the pension fund owning the buildings came to an agreement that evidently made all three parties content. Aalborg University was getting a new campus, Nokia could be released from their contract of the buildings and the owners of the premises avoided empty buildings in an area that already had many free square meters.

But the real bonus of all parties was to sustain and develop R&D activity with the close collaboration of the university, “Nokia start-ups”, and companies offered tenancy at the free spaces at the premises and the public and private innovation and start-up support schemes and entities.

Co-location for co-creation

The idea was to create an environment of trust, collaboration and closeness to each other. It was crucial that the normal way of locating companies and start-up decoupled from the university was to be avoided. The general idea was literally to have researchers, students and companies living next door to each other. The connection points were to be very physical and apparent, so that the mere moving around the campus would make way for planned and unplanned meetings between the entities present. This had of course also to be connected with formal structures of collaboration and exposure to one another.

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The philosophy is that relationship building, common areas of academic and professional interest along with physical possibilities to live out these ambitions make way for new ways of collaboration taking advantage of all knowledge and competencies present. Sharing labs, use students for projects and as interns, form research projects and joint funding are all ways to create innovation faster when all are located where knowledge is created.

2. BACKGROUND

In April 2011 Nokia Denmark presented their plans for shutting down operations in Denmark with the potential loss of 1,100 jobs within mobile R&D and the effective closing of that Danish industry. Aalborg University (AAU) approached Nokia with the intention of helping out Nokia employees with whatever means available in hand of the university, AAU being the biggest ICT university in Denmark. Today, AAU Copenhagen campus is building on the legacy of Nokia, and has actually moved into the former Nokia headquarters, as the Copenhagen campus was growing rapidly and was looking for new premises.

Aalborg University had similar experience from Aalborg when two other major employers shut down their operations in the city. At that time Aalborg University also was in close contact with management of the corporations as to see how collaboration could help create futures and possibilities for the laid off employees. AAU has always been taking responsibility for the university’s engagement and role in the society as to engage in whatever scheme that will make society benefit for university involvement.

The shutting down of Nokia was a big issue in Denmark in sign of the times, thus many parties – public and private – took part in the project of getting as many of the former Nokia employees in employment again as soon as possible.

3. OBJECTIVES

The main objectives of the initiative are to further build on collaborations between the university and its surrounding in taking part in regional and economic development;

 Further enhancing 3rd Mission activities;  Creating stronger and better ties to industry;

 Develop and sustain entrepreneurship and start-up activities;  Co-location for co-creation;

 Easier access to knowledge and facilities (shared labs, premises, equipment etc.);  Using students as innovation resources (building on Aalborg University’s pedagogy

of Problem Based Learning);

 The creation of the network university.

4. RESPONSIBILITY

As mentioned above, both luck and swift decision making by top management at both Aalborg University and Nokia made way for the actions leading to Aalborg University moving into the Nokia buildings creating this campus consisting of both university and businesses.

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In Denmark universities do not own their own buildings so an agreement with the Government also had to be made. In the end, the coalition of the three parties (Aalborg University, Nokia and the pension fund owning the buildings) together made it possible that trying out this form of university campus would lead to sustaining and creating jobs in the long run, thus convincing the politicians of allowing this set-up.

Once the decision was made and contracts were signed, a steering committee was made to secure to make the ambitions come true. Moving a university is one thing; another is to include private companies and organizations at the premises. This included close collaboration between the university’s innovation department and the Technical Services Unit; the first one being responsible for university-business collaboration and the latter with the responsibility of subleasing and the buildings in general.

Implementation

& funding

5. STRATEGY & ACTIVITIES UNDERTAKEN

The strategy behind the case was to build a university-industry setting that provided stronger business-university cooperation through the implementation of co-location of companies and start-ups on campus, thus providing fundamental facilities and services for both companies/start-ups and the university (researchers, students and innovation staff). Genuine co-location as opposed to silo-based science parks that are often decoupled both physically and mentally from the nearness to the university’s knowledge creation – this would call for new structures and models for cooperation.

As Nokia was moving out of the buildings in stages, they had the possibilities of attracting external companies and provide them with housing, and by that starting the pool of co-located companies along with their “own” start-ups coming out of the shutting down. At the same time the academic domains at Aalborg University were to expose the possibility of co-locating for their collaborators and research partners/organizations, thus making way for a diverse gathering of companies within the academic domains of Aalborg University and also with a certain ICT-focus. It has to be emphasized that the criteria of co-location is:

1) Alignment with Aalborg University’s academic domains;

2) Having high academic and professional standard as well as R&D; 3) Having ambitions of growth;

4) Willing to engage and develop the innovation community, participate in joint activities and go into collaboration with the university.

Activities

One of the core issues of a set-up like this is to expose the partners to each other, i.e. getting the companies to get an understanding of the university’s specialties and mode of working as well as having the researchers to identify ways of collaborating with the companies and by that putting extra dimensions to research and lectures.

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This is done in many ways, but it is important to mention that even though the university is well-acknowledged within university-business collaboration, and many companies have experience in working together with HEIs, much of the work dealing with new ways of collaborate begins with relationship building. Thus many of the activities taking place consist of both bilateral meetings and collaboration (and therefore more “non-controllable”) as well as joint and shared activities such as workshops, seminars etc. The range of activities goes from one-to-one meeting among university and companies (and between companies) to more formalized events;

 One-to-one meetings between companies and the university’s researchers, the innovations department, students, other companies etc.;

 Pitch & Match; co-located companies presenting themselves for students in a dialogue based workshop to engage into student projects, master’s thesis, internships, student work (and possible later full recruiting);

 Companies presentations at lecturers presenting student projects;  Company employees acting as guest teachers;

 Company employees attending relevant classes and courses (further education);  Seminars exposing and presenting different aspects of AAU’s areas of expertise and

research – this is also intended to break down silos internally at AAU and having different domains work together in new constellations;

 Presentations of labs, equipment etc.;

 Joint workshops and information meetings regarding EU and other funding possibilities with AAU’s Fundraising department;

 Ad hoc meeting to identify new radical ways of interaction to foster innovation (including external partners and industry);

 Joint research applications;  (Industrial) PhD projects;

 Possibilities for participation at AAU’s Career Days for students;

6. MONITORING AND EVALUATION

Creating a structure of co-location at the Aalborg University Copenhagen campus is very much depending on the active and joint engagement of the university’s researchers and the companies present. Openness and commitment to identify and taking advantage of the possibilities for collaboration are prerequisites for success and development. There hasn’t as such been set up measures for evaluation, but the actual collaboration and dialogue between university and businesses are being followed and registered as to look into how the development is shaped. The attraction of companies is still in its building, and new ways of mutual exposure and communication are adding to the already existing ways of “getting to know each other better”.

All kinds of collaboration (student project work, master’s thesis, internships, student employees, research collaboration, joint funding, guest teachers, participating and developing joint workshops, seminars etc., collaboration between the business, innovation camps etc.) are being registered by the innovation department, and this will hopefully serve as indicators of how the co-location works on a daily basis.

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7. SUSTAINABILITY MEASURES

In the long term the sustainability of the “co-location for co-location”-set-up should be an integrated part of the university’s way of engaging with external partners and enhancing its normal collaboration with companies and thus contribute to the university’s 3rd Mission. In fact, as long as the companies are paying the rent, the researchers and students of the university are taking advantage of the possibility of working together with companies, and structures and organization of the university should see to that frames for collaboration are carried out. But due to the some way new set-up for co-location, initial development and framing of the cooperation has to be taken care of and implemented into the organization (the university).

The attracting of new companies and start-ups are also a task for the existing frames of the operation of a university, i.e. the researchers have to be proactive in exposing the possibility of locating their collaborators, as well as the innovation department has tasks of co-developing the “community of innovation and knowledge sharing” at the premises. After all resources for this cannot all be integrated in basis funding for university entities involved, so additional funding schemes are still to be identified and implemented, so that the sustainability of the effort of location is secured in the long run. The true value of this co-location for involved partners can hopefully be a lever for financial good solutions for such endeavors.

8. COSTS

Some of the major areas of costs are the resources put into co-location and the resources going into maintaining and building trust based relationships to the industrial partners present at the university. The strategy builds on the companies to be at the campuses and paying their rent in something else than money, but by monetizing the value they provide as external lecturers, company equipment to the disposition of others, research time and other. So far the main expenses and activities are being carried out by existing resources allocated to the different entities at the university (mainly the Innovation department and the research groups) in times of man hours and within the working areas that already has to be carried out by the single entity, especially the Innovation department that is currently working with university-industry collaboration.

9. FUNDING

As indicated in the two paragraphs above, the main funding has been self-funding from the university and the concerned companies present, but efforts are taken into gaining more external funding for refining the structures, as the schemes is hopefully to be seen as best practice in university-industry interaction.

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Outcomes

& Impact

10. OUTCOMES

18 month into the moving of the university and implementation of the co-location, one thing is very clear, and that is that the proximity of the present entities has great effect in the relationship building and the possibilities to act swift on potential for collaboration. The fact is that an appointment can be issued within even minutes agreeing of having a cup of coffee right away by just going up to floors to the concerned partner, or agreeing of meeting for lunch the next day in the shared canteen has proved to be a great lever of the enhanced effort to create active connections points at campus. In that matter much of the desired way of interacting has been gained.

This has lead to multiple ways of interacting, many of these the same as listed under “5. Strategy and activities undertaken”:

 One-to-one meetings between companies and the university’s researchers, the innovations department, students, other companies etc.;

 Pitch & Match; co-located companies presenting themselves for students in a dialogue based workshop to engage into student projects, master’s thesis, internships, student work (and possible later full recruiting);

 Companies presentations at lecturers presenting student projects;  Company employees acting as guest teachers;

 Company employees attending relevant classes and courses (further education);  Seminars exposing and presenting different aspects of AAU’s areas of expertise and

research;

 Sharing of labs, equipment etc.;

 Joint workshops and information meetings regarding EU and other funding possibilities with AAU’s Fundraising department;

 Ad hoc meeting to identify new radical ways of interaction to foster innovation (including external partners and industry);

 Joint research applications;  (Industrial) PhD projects;

 Participation at AAU’s Career Days for students.

11. IMPACTS

A great impact on Aalborg University has been the branding of the university as an interesting and pro-active institution with great connection to the outside world. Aalborg University was already acclaimed for being well connected to industry but this has further underlined this statement.

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On a larger scale, the impact of the initiative has been a strengthening of the entrepreneurial eco-system in Copenhagen to the benefit of knowledge based startup. The focus of the universities part in the entrepreneurship ecosystem has been highlighted and the opportunities that lie herein has been demonstrated to a greater audience, why the biggest impact of the initiative has been to demonstrate that universities somehow should be incentivized to play a more active role in knowledge transfer and collaboration with industry.

12. INVOLVED STAKEHOLDERS AND BENEFICIARIES

A cornerstone of Aalborg University is that we are an integrated part of the innovation system and to further strengthen the innovation system, we need to become a stronger university. Thus a major part of the initiative had the aim of strengthening the university by supporting start up and industry that could benefit from working with our researchers and lab equipment. Therefore the biggest benefit is obtained by Aalborg University, who can brand itself as an interesting place to work, study and place a company. Besides from this the following stakeholders take benefit from the initiative;

 The regional innovation system obtains a systematic setup for connecting industry and academia.

 The region obtains an initiative that’s supports job creation and skills development through lifelong learning opportunities.

 Former Nokia staff benefits from a partner that supports their learning and start up needs.

 Startups benefit from having an easy and affordable access to a university and it’s infrastructure

 Industry benefits from the opportunity of being able to place the company directly into the university, co-located with relevant researchers, students and companies. In order to fully integrate this initiative into the regional innovation system, continuous dialogue is maintained with business support units from the municipality, the entrepreneurship ecosystem and other universities.

13. AWARDS / RECOGNITION

The co-location has been widely reported through different media and platforms, but so far the scheme is still in its developing thus not having found its final form. Therefore the results are still on their way and have not been accounted for in a form that entitles them to be recognized on a broader scheme, but this is hopefully soon on its way, as the collaboration produces more tangible results and effects.

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Lessons

learned

14. PRIMARY CHALLENGES

A major challenge has been to undertake a university – industry collaboration not seen before, and with a business model that is difficult to handle within the framework of a public university. As the university (of course) does not have rental as one of its core products, there has been some challenges as getting alignment of the main reasons for renting out square meters to companies among the Innovation department, the academic staff, the Technical Services unit and management, especially within the question of state-subsidized efforts within the scheme securing that the university wasn’t doing anything illegal or doubtful.

On the collaboration side it has proved difficult to get a formalized and smooth collaboration running between companies, start-ups, students and researchers, even though the results and activities mentioned in the paragraphs above do prove that this is accomplished to a certain degree. The overall challenges is to create ownership for the joint efforts for the university as a whole to develop this co-location, because to this point is has been a minority of academic staff being involved in the collaboration, so there is a great need to expose the successes and good case stories internally to the researchers at the university to expand the possibilities for collaboration – also internally between the departments to enhance further cross-disciplinary activities.

15. SUCCESS FACTORS

The full success of the initiative still needs to be fully realized as this is a rather young initiative, but a strong focus on the legal framework of industry-university collaboration needs to be maintained, as long with a continuous evaluation of whether such an initiative pays off to the university when measuring one of our bottom lines. Key factors here will be to look at the financial implications of such an initiative, but it will also be important to measure whether the presence of an interesting and attractive study environment will attract more students and staff, or i.e. research funding from co-located companies.

16. TRANSFERABILITY

The case will have elements that are hard to transfer, but a key element here will be transferable and useful to other institutions; how do we as universities take responsibility in times of instability and crisis? For Aalborg University it has always been a mission to support the regional economic development, but in this case it has also meant investments and activities that should be undertaken on a very short notice, and from time and again to the wonder of some of our key stakeholders. Therefore a key learning point has been, that it is important for the universities to work with our part in economic development, and to take action when it is called upon, and in order to do this, it is important to be well integrated into the regional innovation system and to be flexible.

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Further

Information

17. PUBLICATIONS / ARTICLES

None available.

18. LINKS

So far external exposure is not yet implemented, as the scheme has so far merely been mouth-to-mouth and internal communication and notices on the university intranet and direct contact between partners, but as the co-location is getting more substantial with critical mass of companies, the external communication will be developed and prioritized.

19. KEYWORDS

Co-location, job creation, start-ups, knowledge sharing, shared facilities, student projects, practical experience, community building.

20. PUBLIC CONTACT DETAILS

Aalborg University AAU Innovation Cph Jakob Stolt

A.C. Meyers Vænge 15 2450 Copenhagen SV Denmark Phone: +45 9940 7363 E-mail: [email protected] Web: www.aau.dk

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