From July 6 to 10, the “Dialogue Days” of the European Project RiConfigure will take place, an open online process that brings together policy makers, practitioners and researchers working in the field of innovation. Knowledge and experience of participants from innovation policy and praxis are linked with findings from an empirical analysis of European and Colombian cases of Quadruple Helix collaborations (innovation projects involving actors from public sector, industry, academia and civil society). The aim of the dialogues is to discuss what it needs for these type of innovation projects to thrive – particularly in these challenging times. The participation and realization of these days allows to:
- Explore and learn from good practice examples for collaborative innovation
- Discuss tools & methods for involving civil society in innovation
- Connect and develop new ideas of practitioners and policy makers
- Jointly lay ground for a policy brief, an innovation training program and practice-oriented handbooks for collaborative innovation targeted for practitioners and policy makers

Second session of “Dialogue Days” about building structures to colleborative innovation
The output of the Dialogue Days will be: a practitioners’ guide, and a policy brief.
The practitioners’ guide will be a co-creation the participants that will count on their inputs during each day, thus creating a document where the experiences and lessons of innovation practitioners will be collected and structured to help others establish and manage of Quadruple Helix. Participants work on questions connected to the main findings of the RiConfigure Project.
On the other hand, the policy brief aimsto inform and support policy makers about policy instruments that assist inclusive innovation processes to thrive. This policy document will be jointly created highlighting how innovation, policy and funding can support collaborative innovation with the active inclusion of civil society actors. Each day we will pick up ideas and lessons of this event and channel it towards first ideas for this policy brief – the RiConfigure team will create the final conclusions after the dialogue days are over. All people who participated will be credited.
Once the sessions are over, RiConfigure team will write up two documents, there will be follow-up activities by RiConfigure including trainings on Quadruple Helix innovation and civil society involvement, as well as a final conference planned for 2021.
The Center for Science, Communication and Society Studies at Pompeu Fabra University (CCS-UPF) is part of the RiConfigure project and participates in the dialogues by moderating some sessions. In addition, the event allows us to collect relevant information and provide feedback on the development of three courses on collaborations for innovation, which will be announced at the end of the year and tested in different countries in early 2021.
About the RiConfigure
RiConfigure is a European Project that focuses on the diversification of institutions and roles of the research and innovation system through the participation of all sectors of society: research, industry, the public sector and civil society. It wants to promote greater participation and representation of people from different fields in the research and innovation system. Among the objectives of the project is the training of these actors in topics such as RRI (Responsible Research and Innovation). The CCS-UPF team, due to its experience in training and in RRI, is in charge of this task within the project.
The project implements a series of workshops and interventions in which actors
explore different forms of Quadruple Helix collaborations, exchange experiences and help to identify good practices. Working together across different sectors – research, industry, the public sector, and civil society – has great promise for innovation projects that seek to provide public value. But new forms of collaboration also entail new challenges that we want to help innovation actors identify and overcome. We supplement this with extensive study of roughly 100 quadruple helix cases, cross-cutting analysis of collaboration practice & governance, as well as a series of high-level dialogue events in which innovation practitioners and policy-makers meet to discuss, learn, and influence.
More information
Este blog cuenta con la colaboración de la Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología – Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación