Developing Cooperation between Academia and Society through Knowledge and Capacity Building

Project name	Developing Cooperation between Academia and Society through Knowledge and Capacity Building
Registration number
Grant provider	International Visegrad Fund
Project start date	1. 7. 2023
Project end date	31. 12. 2024
Main leader of the project	Prague University of Economics and Business, Faculty of Management
Main researcher from FM VŠE	Mgr. Ing. Martin Luštický, Ph.D.
Grant provided	9 982 EUR

Project annotation

The project responds to the increasing importance of the university’s third mission, which connects the academic environment with society. A necessary condition is the establishment of cooperation with regional actors, such as entrepreneurs and public administration institutions, and then ensuring an effective knowledge transfer from the academic sphere into practice. Since universities in the V4 countries still need more experience in implementing the third mission, their knowledge and capacity in this area must be strengthened.

The project solution is divided into two working packages, resulting in two outputs: (1) a knowledge & good practices base and (2) an online virtual market connecting academia with society.

Working Package 1: Knowledge Building

The first working package aims to enhance knowledge building and learning from good practices. It consists of an evaluation of the activities of project partners within their third mission. The evaluation was based on the partners’ internal experience and knowledge and the opinions of the regional actors – the external organizations – involved in cooperation activities.

The internal survey was focused on partners’ experiences with implemented activities, achieved results, methods of cooperation, communication, etc. The main areas of interest were the following: (a) education, (b) applied research & dissemination of innovations, (c) employees training, (d) non-formal cooperation activities, and (e) marketing and managing activities. The survey was realized in July 2023.

The external survey helped to reveal the attitudes of external organizations towards existing forms of cooperation and find out their needs and requirements. The external organizations were defined as (a) regional government authorities, (b) local administrative units (LAU II; cities) having a population of more than 5 000 inhabitants, and (c) entrepreneurs – members of the regional chambers of commerce. The survey focused on the following areas: (a) good practices (positives), (b) improvement opportunities (negatives), (c) future intentions (needs and expectations), and (d) recommendations. External data were gathered in October and November 2023.

The data were elaborated in a summary report which purpose is to provide a platform for building a knowledge & good practices base shared among all project partners (project Output 1). The base will become a keystone for creating an online virtual market connecting academia with society. The output can be downloaded at the bottom of this page (Working Package 1).

Working Package 2: Capacity Building

The second working package is focused on capacity building. It utilizes the knowledge & good practices base and transforms it into an online match-making tool as a web application that connects regional actors with the academic sphere. The application serves as an online guide that provides the actors with all the information and processes needed to launch cooperation with the academic sphere. Hence, the application enables the actors to fully utilize the potential of universities and simultaneously accelerates the cooperation and knowledge transfer process.

Project Meeting

The project meeting has opened the working package solving. The project leader and co-leaders met at the Faculty of Management on 25th March 2024. Team members discussed the application’s basic idea and fundamental framework resulting from the knowledge & good practices base. After that, they developed the findings in detail and summarized them comprehensively. The summary will serve as a starting ground for the web application building in close cooperation with an external provider.