Exploring what roles the university can play in organizing interactions between researchers-users-business in order to use engineering knowledge to improve sports

• Emerging new technology require an innovation network and organizational structures as well as integration of research, users and public policy which are supposed to give access to valuable resources (Chesbrough, 2006; Perkmann et al., 2013). Universities have to be seen as strategic actors, as an organization, and their role is changing in society and it may be useful to consider the university as an organization, trying to position themselves to obtain resources and set goals (Deiaco, Hughes, & McKelvey, 2012). Previous studies have emphasized more research of how and why academics engaged with the society in terms of providing three types of knowledge-intensive services: education, research and societal interaction (McKelvey & Zaring, 2017). However, literature on university-industry collaboration has paid little attention to societal interaction and how a university can create organizational structure to reformulate their engagement with the society and industry (Alexander, Miller, & Fielding, 2015). The working research question for this paper is "Exploring what role the university can play in organizing interactions between researcher - users - business in order to use engineering knowledge to improve sports? This paper is based on a case study of Chalmers Sport and Technology, a platform where researchers engage with universities, industry, public policy, students and society to undertake advanced sports-related research. The data consist of 7 interviews transcripts, field notes from 7 observations and document studies of 70 newspaper, articles and press from the period 2011-2017. The study shows that the university adopts unconventional strategies in their attempt to establish structures for academic engagement with the society. Findings indicate that this platform act as a facilitator for innovation and gives insights into how universities can engage users, collaborative reserach and governing bodies within equestrian sport in order to recrute students, create new reserach areas, commercialize knowledge and goodwill.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Övrig annan samhällsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

university-industry; Chalmers; equestrian sports; innovation; sports management

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

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