Beyond the third mission: Exploring the emerging university function of co-creation for sustainability

This paper explores a global trend where universities are collaborating with government, industry and civil society to advance the sustainable transformation of a specific geographical area or societal sub-system. With empirical evidence, we argue that this function of ‘co-creation for sustainability’ could be interpreted as the seeds of an emerging, new mission for the university. We demonstrate that this still evolving mission differs significantly from the economic focus of the third mission and conventional technology transfer practices, which we argue, should be critically examined. After defining five channels through which a university can fulfil the emerging mission, we analyse two frontrunner…