On the 11th of March 2021, the University of Macerata organised the Validation Workshop of the RE-ACT project. The aim of the online event was to discuss and present the preliminary results from the RE-ACT’s research activities (WP1). Participants involved were 30 from all the categories of the Quadruple Helix, of which 19 representatives from Higher Education Institutions, 5 Companies, 5 Local/regional public authorities, and RIS3 policymakers, and 1 local association.
Almost all the participants engaged in the dialogue, by offering their perspective about the results of the research activities, which was also validated through a questionnaire. The relevance and clarity of the statements elaborated by the project’s consortium to build the self-evaluation tool “HEInnovate for RIS3” were proposed through an online questionnaire and evaluated by the attendees. The majority of them mainly considered the level of relevance to be between good and excellent as well as for the clarity of statements.
A final discussion stressed that HEIs can be “bridges” able to connect the local to the global ecosystem and work as “aggregators” for co-creation and contamination in different disciplines and approaches and with the involvement of the industry (both theoretical and empirical level). Several dimensions can be involved to this purpose, such as “entrepreneurial teaching and learning” both for students and for entrepreneurs, “knowledge exchange and collaboration” through living and contamination labs, “measuring impact”.
