Abstract

Universities of applied sciences (UAS) have a strong mandate to carry out research, development and innovation (RDI) activities in collaboration with local stakeholders. Geographical proximity is one of the key factors for the creation and success of RDI activities because of the positive balance between costs and benefits of local knowledge transfer, but they also depend on the networks of individual staff members. This paper aims to explore how the UAS have managed to maintain and develop purpose-built and individual RDI partnerships during the COVID-19 pandemic by proposing an enlarged theoretical framework for assessing contextual dimensions of the RDI activities beyond academic entrepreneurship as business ventures (Wright, 2014). A single case study drawing on semi-structured research interviews investigates how the swap to remote working have affected to RDI activities of in the case of Tampere University of Applied Sciences, one of the biggest UAS in Finland with intense regional linkages. The contribution of the study is twofold; Firstly, the paper introduces an expanded theoretical approach for assessing the external and internal factors having an impact on the RDI activities beyond academic entrepreneurship. Secondly, by testing the proposed framework, it shares insights and good practices derived from empirical evidence, namely binary data and semi-structured interviews revealing experiences of RDI personnel and project managers involved with different phases of RDI process, for optimising high-quality innovation support, knowledge transfer activities and co-creation of new knowledge in exceptional circumstances.