Aalborg University (AAU) was founded in 1974 from a merger of several well-established higher education institutions with roots going back to the late 18th century. From initially 3 000 students, AAU grew to approximately 16 000 students, who can choose from more than hundred study programmes, at bachelor, master and doctorate levels, and three different geographic locations across Denmark. AAU's three campuses are very different in terms of size, research areas and industry partnerships. The Esbjerg campus is located on the west coast of the Jutland peninsula in southwest Denmark, and is with approximately 600 students and 110 employees the smallest campus. Teaching and research focuses on energy, chemistry and biotechnology, oil and gas, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, electronics and medialogy. The Copenhagen campus, AAU-Cph, hosts approximately 3 500 students and employs 550 staff. The steady increase in research activity, covering a range of areas, including virtual reality, mobile communication, sustainable energy sources and organisational communications, resulted in an expansion of the Copenhagen AAU campus. The main campus is located in the city of Aalborg, in northern Denmark; with approximately 11 500 it is the largest of the three campuses, offering a wide range of study and research programmes. Teaching and learning at AAU are centred on problem-basedand project-organised pedagogies. The so-called "Aalborg model" trains students in independent learning, which is often embedded in the local business community, and thus close to real-life problems. Students learn to identify and analyse problems, to work result-oriented and successfully in teams. Most of these learning objectives are similar to what is required starting up and developing one’s own business. Hence, entrepreneurship is an integral part of AAU's core strategy and elemental to its innovation approach as a knowledge-generating and culture-bearing institution that contributes to technological, economic, social, and cultural innovation. AAU's entrepreneurship, innovation, and knowledge exchange activities are coordinated by AAU Innovation across the three campuses. Its main unit working on entrepreneurship promotion is SEA (Supporting Entrepreneurship at Aalborg University), which works across all faculties. It was established in 2002 and has 6 non-academic staff.SEA's budget is  financed by one-third from the AAU main budget and by two-third from external sources.

Innovative Features

• HEI - Business/External Relationships for Knowledge Exchange

The announcement of Nokia, in April 2011, to close down development activities in Denmark, gave birth to a new strategic initiative of the AAU campus in Copenhagen: co-location for co-creation to intensify business links.

AAU, being the biggest ICT-university in Denmark with a longstanding tradition of collaboration with Nokia, acted swiftly upon the announcement and invited companies to locate literally next door to students and researchers. Nokia’s ramping down let to the creation of several new firms by laid-off Nokia-employees, who recognised the opportunities in the area of mobile solution development and other technology domains. AAU targeted these by offering:

• education and further training possibilities,
• collaboration with students and researchers to exchange knowledge, technology and skilled labour with practical and real-life experiences with entrepreneurship and innovation.

The Nokia-AAU partnership provided the university with new premises, which were much needed because of the rapid growth of the Copenhagen campus, and it provided the right environment for intensified university-business collaboration. The aim was not to create a science park decoupled from the university, but to create organisational and physical structures that enhance the establishment of new standards in knowledge sharing and co-creation.

Co-location and intensive exchange

Some of the buildings are still under construction, but the experiences to date clearly show that building relationships between different actors from different spheres – academia and business – is easier when everyone is using the same premises, that is everyone uses the same canteen, the same aisles and meeting rooms, and can book auditoriums for events and presentations of research results.

For this to happen in a natural way, communication about who the ‘tenants’ are, is important. Students and researchers, of course, know of each other’s existence. Information about the companies, their areas of work, and why and how these could be interesting research partners or destinations for internships, needs to be communicated on a broader scale. All the same, also the AAU needs to inform about their areas of research and the opportunities for collaboration. To this end, a communication strategy is being developed by AAU to ensure best use of an online platform and personal contacts.

AAU Innovation is implementing the co-location scheme, with two staff in the Copenhagen campus working closely with professors and researchers in the different departments. The co-location scheme involves a wide range of partners providing business start-up, mentoring and development support. AAU Innovation is collaborating closely with these organisations, as the university itself does not have the competencies or the wish to play this role. The university’s role is to chip in knowledge in the equation. In this way, new and incumbent companies located on the new campus have easy access to support.

Co-learning and co-creation

A core objective is to increase synergies between the teaching and learning activities at AAU-Chp and the co-location and co-creation efforts. Several workshops have been organised with start-ups, students and incumbent firms, resulting in new projects, research thesis and student employment. Some of the more established companies are building on student projects and internships to go into joint research collaboration with the university. Also, collaboration amongst the tenant firms has increased. Even though the critical mass is still quite small for the new campus (16 companies and start-ups), initiatives, such as the Danish App Lab (DAL) and newly established Copenhagen Game Lab, are likely to boost the innovation environment. DAL was established by AAU, Microsoft and Nokia in November 2012 as place for cross-disciplinary collaboration in App development. AAU has several initiatives in the area of gaming and uses these extensively for idea generation and gaming start-ups, recently. This promoted the launch of Copenhagen Game Lab in September 2013 to investigate the multiple applications of gaming in teaching, research and business. Danish App Lab and Copenhagen Game Lab are both physically placed in AAU Copenhagen, but they function as “virtual labs” and make use of social media and streaming, video-mentoring, video-tech talks, to conceive and implement projects, and to involve actors from all over Denmark.

Results/Achievements

All these initiatives have transformed the campus into an environment which is conducive to new ways of knowledge creation, sharing and absorption. Communication has been the key tool to increase understanding, appreciation and utilisation of resources made available through increased relationships between academia and businesses. The commitment from senior university management and the allocation of sufficient resources have been crucial success factors. There may be an ICT-bias of the companies located on thenew campus, which may not reflect the full range of AAU Copenhagen's study programmes and research activities, and therefore limit student engagement. Most of the study programmes are by nature cross-disciplinary (e.g. Medialogy, Sustainable Biotechnology and Techno-Anthropology), yet there is reluctance and uncertainty amongst study programme coordinators, researchers and students to engage closer with ICT. This has to be taken into account. Several initiatives are underway to promote a broader understanding of ICT as enabler and provider instead of a technical stand-alone item. Not all companies understand the world of university, and thus have difficulties in seeing opportunities for collaboration. Not always a university is capable of acting swift enough from the companies’ point of view. Certain governance structures as well as cultural and historical reasons cause why things happen, or do not happen, at a university. A smaller campus at a smaller university, such as the case for the AAU campus in Copenhagen, may be able to act faster than bigger or older institutions, but it isn’t a guarantee for smooth operations and problem free administration and the absence of bureaucratic obstacles. Especially the question of rent for the companies and the discussion whether the university provides subsidies for the companies has caused debate and is an area for further investigation by the AAU. Interesting to note is that businesses contacting the AAU Innovation with a somewhat unimpressed and “naïve” approach has led the way for new areas of cross-disciplinary collaboration.  The companies focused on potentially relevant areas of research without being aware of eventually existing walls between faculties and research groups. In this way, triggered by “outsiders”, silos have been broken down and new partnerships are forming within AAU.

Source

This case study was prepared by Jakob Stolt from AAU in collaboration with the OECD Secretariat, through collection and analysis of broad documentation about AAU and interviews with key university representatives.

Contact

Jakob Stolt

Senior Adviser

jas@adm.aau.dk