Practice what you preach

Abstract

Campus decision makers are increasingly expected to adopt ‘campus innovations’ (affecting real estate and different facilities), not only from the market and demand-led (external campus innovations), but also developed by the university's own scientists (internal campus innovations). The adoption of the latter can be driven and hindered by many unique factors that campus decision makers have not dealt with before. To provide insight into them, qualitative data were collected from 13 out of 14 Dutch research-intensive universities. The results indicate that internal campus innovations are driven by co-creation stimulation, collaborative partnership, transparency and accountability, and local development contribution. Their adoption, however, may be obstructed by barriers embedded in the interaction between campus decision makers and scientists, organizational university context, funds unavailability and innovations' supply-pushed characteristics. An increased understanding of these barriers and the practices to overcome them is crucial for universities' campus decision makers to actively engage in the adoption of internal campus innovations.