Effective collaboration and enhanced synergies with the ecosystem - at local, regional and national levels are crucial for an entrepreneurial and innovative HEI, as it understands the value of engaging with multiple stakeholders to establish synergies. Therefore, it supports innovation to be aligned with the local, national and global challenges and benefits from existing capabilities and networks.

Collaboration with industry, the public sector and society can take a wide range of different forms, varying in terms of intensity and formality. The focus can be on teaching, research, or any form of strategic collaboration. Examples of such activities include:

• Systematic or ad-hoc involvement of external stakeholders in teaching
• Collaboration on internships and secondments
• Continuous learning and further education programmes
• Joint research initiatives, contract research
• Various forms of technology transfer, e.g., licensing, selling of prototypes, spin-offs

Higher education institutions should place a high value on collaboration with its entrepreneurial ecosystem. Many collaborative activities with business and other external partners are at the individual level, therefore, to ensure organisation-wide commitment, knowledge exchange and networking should be a core objective of the organisation's strategy and incorporated into the institutional policies.

Demonstrating active involvement in knowledge exchange and partnerships is a matter of both internal and external communication. The aim of external communication is to reach beyond current partners and establish new relationships. To achieve this, substantial communication efforts towards external stakeholders in the local economy might be required.

Not all potential knowledge exchange partners have a clear understanding of the work culture, conditions and timelines in higher education and how these may impact collaboration. The establishment of meeting fora, where external and internal stakeholders can meet, discuss and exchange can help foster effective collaboration and networking. Ideally, brainstorming and idea creation activities are expert-facilitated so as to alleviate communication difficulties and barriers related to the use of jargon, different working styles and organisational cultures.

Alumni carry huge potential as enablers and accelerators of collaborative activities. A strong and well-structured alumni organisation can be a very valuable financial and social asset for higher education institutions. Alumni should be actively involved for example in curriculum design and programme delivery, lifelong learning activities, career services, entrepreneurship education, mentoring, fundraising, and the wider entrepreneurial agenda.

Collaborative activities can benefit from internal co-ordination, and there are different structures and mechanisms to enhance co-ordination. Centralised approaches – for example a central knowledge transfer office in charge of commercialisation of the research results owned by the HEI – work well for activities that require a certain amount of administrative support. Such an approach, would, however, be less effective if collaboration is based on individual contacts and is mainly in specific activities, such as, for example, the collaboration with external experts in teaching. Furthermore, a central co-ordination unit and/or an electronic platform to share information about current and past activities can greatly facilitate knowledge exchange.