Features of the higher education institutions’ community innovation labs

There has been an increasing demand from society towards higher education institutions (HEIs) to contribute to the development of local communities in which they are embedded through responsible (social) innovation actions. Redesigning thoughtfully the relationship between HEIs, the public sector, diverse private actors and NGOs is paramount. The goal is to create a connected governance structure that enables coherent innovation actions by diverse actors in accordance with co-creation principles and collective intelligence. A response to this call for action from academic stance are so called community innovation labs (CILs). This paper gives an overview of the CIL concept and framework and reports first experiences on running CIL projects. Drawing on the existing literature on community innovation labs as well as experiments and projects run by a business school CIL from Romania, the paper identifies the key elements of the management framework for running a CIL. The paper also makes recommendations regarding how such an experimental setting can be used in higher education business and management studies for generating solutions to sustainability problems.