COMPASS’ importance lies in the reinforcement of Higher Education institution communities and networks as Innovation ecosystems, facilitating connections between academics, entrepreneurs and public authorities, aligning their educational offer and tailoring their research and knowledge transfer to Smart Specialization Strategies and cities strategic plans priorities, seizing opportunities for innovation in priority sectors, and helping local businesses and other organizations to understand and adopt new ways of thinking. In order to achieve this, several activities have been carried out: Ulysseus Research & Innovation Action Plan, COMPASS Researchers’ Days (six brokerage events), COMPASS webinars by Ulysseus Innovation Hubs, publication of Ulysseus R&I Gender Agenda, production of sin different guides based R&I topics and COMPASS Platforms and Tools for Open Science.
COMPASS aims to support institutional transformation in the research and innovation dimension of the partner universities, so that they manage to play a wider role in local and regional growth as education and R&I agents, relying on models which are increasingly networked with businesses and society and routed in innovation and education. In accordance to this, COMPASS dissemination, exploitation, and communication objectives, as pathways to impact, aim to:
- Spread Ulysseus Innovation Ecosystem model and best practices for R&I activities to the widest international public, stakeholders, end users and institutions for turning Ulysseus in an excellent European University model in R&I
- Engage Ulysseus community (partners and associated), stakeholders, end users and citizens in Ulysseus R&I activities designed through COMPASS for maximizing impact.
Thus, COMPASS is considered a great opportunity for transforming the six universities of the Ulysseus alliance into high impact R&I institutions, integrating an excellence model jointly designed and implemented. Diversity and different framework conditions have been taken into account overcoming barriers as:
- Difficulties to sustain the alliance beyond the financed period
- Administrative barriers and obstacles
- Different level of R&I specialization and intensity
- Quality standards and business processes implementation.
