The online gathering of practitioners was organised by University Industry Innovation Network (UIIN) on December 2-3, 2020. The event covered a wide range of topics around university-industry engagement with the main focus being on people – those who are at the forefront of interaction, who break down the barriers between academia and business and drive meaningful change and collaborative innovation for their organisations. See https://uiin.org/sbforum/

The winners & runners-ups of the first edition of the Boundary Spanning Champions Online Forum:

Best University-Business Cooperation Story

• Winner: Urban Mill: Agile Globally Networked Place-Based University-Industry Innovation Facilitator and Orchestrator at Espoo Innovation Garden, Kari Mikkelä, Urban Mill Innovation Platform
• Runner-up: Bridging the Gaps in Industrial Digitalisation: Academics, Vendors and Users, David Cameron, University of Oslo

Best Innovative Education Story

• Winner: Developing a Commercial Film Production Ecosystem in Academia with Pedagogy at Its Heart, Neil Fox, Sound/Image Cinema Lab at Falmouth University
• Runner-up: 360 Learning – Collaborative Innovation in Multihelix, Tanja Hulst, 360 Learning Engineering

Best Boundary Spanning Tool

• Winner: SPARK-ECG, Measuring and Ensuring Consensus and Coproduction with Industrial Partners. Identifying Success Factors, Stefan Brolin, Jönköping University
• Runner-Up: The Degree-of-Engagement Diagram, a Tool for Supporting Collaborative Business Modelling for Sustainability by University-Industry Cooperation, Inge Oskam, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences

UIIN is an international knowledge leader on university-industry engagement, entrepreneurial universities dedicated to the future of higher education institutions and the impact on society. Website: https://uiin.org/

Suggested reading: Why Spanning Boundaries Agents Are the New Generation’s Super-Heroes