A Co-creation Centre for University–Industry Collaboration – A Framework for Concept Development

Abstract It is argued in general that future success in effective innovation creation is built on the ability to connect and manage talent, partnerships and related practical innovation processes. This makes it challenging for a university to develop an ecosystem of knowledge creation. The full benefit from a university can only be obtained if the university and society are organically linked together. The needs of society have to be at the centre of a university's activities, and flexible adjustment to changing needs is necessary but often lacking. Campus management has a major role in the facilitation of multidisciplinary interaction between students, scientists, entrepreneurs and other industry partners that inspire each other with different perspectives on the same subject. One significant tool to support open innovation with diverse stakeholders is to provide supportive spaces with relevant services. This paper aims to identify the requirements of a Co-creation Centre as a concept serving the third role of auniversity. The literature review was conducted and, based on the result, this paper proposes a conceptual framework for capturing the key requirements for developing a multiuser Co-creation Centre. The framework consists ofthe requirements on the demand and supply sides of campus management. The main findings in this paper are that different modes of knowledge conversion have different capabilities tosupport knowledge co-creation requirements. Knowledge co-creation process requirements in the multiuser Co-creation Centre for university–industry collaboration are best supported by originating “Ba”, which means the place where individuals share feelings, emotions, experiences, and mental models and the place where the knowledge-creation process begins. The results contribute to the concept development in campus management and provide a starting point for evaluating the success of multidisciplinary and multi-actor innovation environments.