Navigating troubled waters: antecedents and challenges for a common nexus towards ‘safe helix harbours’

Abstract

Universities’ roles in helix settings are increasingly complex, partly due to universities’ multiple missions, one of which is to create social value. To narrow this gap and clarify how universities navigate helix settings, our paper focuses on the ways universities might engage with diverse stakeholders in their ecosystem in order to co-create social value and further aims to grasp which challenges as well as facilitating factors are present in such endeavours. Our empirical settings focus on how a Swedish university interacts and co-operates with external stakeholders, focusing on two collaboration projects initiated by said university. We do so by building on the framework of antecedents for reaching a common nexus in multiple helix settings. Our findings point to both antecedents and challenges to reaching a common nexus in the investigated projects, thereby hinting to the complexity of helix settings projects and the need for balancing antecedents and challenges in order to meet societal goals.