Institut Mines-Télécom Business School (IMTBS) is one of 13 graduate schools in the Institut Mines-Telecom, one of France’s major educational and research establishments. In addition to IMTBS, the Institute groups many of the country’s key engineering schools and plays a central role in developing both ground-breaking and applied research, innovation and education for engineers, managers, specialists and faculty. The schools of the Institute are acknowledged for their excellence at both national and international levels. Institut Mines-Telecom is a both a major actor in the French research landscape and in European research programmes, accounting for 192 research contracts in FP7, for example.  The Institute combines strong academic legitimacy, close corporate relations and a unique focus on four key transformative fields of the 21st century: Digital Technologies, Energy, Ecology and Production.

The FH Münster – University of Applied Sciences was founded in 1971 and has developed to a modern, achievement-oriented university with a strong applied research orientation. With more than 15.000 students it is one of the bigger institution of its kind in Germany. It employs >1.000 staff members (thereof >300 teaching staff) and offers 90 courses of study in 12 departments and 3 interdisciplinary institutions. The University has received several awards on its DNA of “University Business and University Society Cooperation, as well as Knowledge Transfer” and “Quality Assurance in Teaching, Research and Third Mission”.

The project partner Science-to-Business Marketing Research Centre as one of its Institutes consists of close to 30 staff from 18 different nations. Three Research Lines (S2B Science-to-Business, S2S Science-to-Society, S2I Science-to-Innovation) conduct Research in National level and EU Programs and do consulting work for Businesses (SME and Corporates) and Universities in the world.

The University of Malaga (UMA) is one the Spain’s premiere institutions of higher learning. Since its foundation back in 1972, UMA has rapidly expanded its international presence and prestige. Currently, UMA has two campuses, more than 35.000 students, 2.400 professors, 23 faculties and schools, 82 departments, 200 educational programmes, about 200 Ph.D. thesis/year, 278 research groups, more than 400 projects and more than 1.800 business contacts.

UMA is strongly commited with entrepreneurship and the creation of new companies. Those initiativies are quite spread along the university and are coordinated by the Vice Rectorate for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Thanks to this activity, UMA is nowadays one key element of the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem, materialised in the centre Link by UMA-Atech.

Link is a common space for university and companies to arise creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. Is a place where the university community have the chance to learn and experiment, while companies find out great professionals. Link works as a hub, a place that connects different actors from the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem. Participation of UMA and Link in project such Boundary Spanners will help enhancing its role as innomediator in the close environment and to expand its impact at international level.

Founded in 1773, Istanbul Technical University (ITU) is a prominent and pioneering university of engineering and architecture with many innovative studies in science, technology, research and development. ITU, as a university mainly composed of graduate engineering schools and research laboratories, works closely in collaboration with enterprises and other economic and social partners. ITU facilitates the knowledge and technology transfer to industries, management centres, briefly to all society. To do this, İTÜ has created many Techno-Science parks, incubation centres, entrepreneurship and innovation centre and technology transfer office. Hence, ITU offers a favourable environment for commercialization of research as well as university-industry collaboration at all levels.

EURASHE is the European Association of Institutions in Higher Education that offer professionally-orientated programmes and are engaged in applied and profession-related research within the Bologna cycles. Currently about 1100 higher education institutions in 40 countries within and outside the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) are affiliated to EURASHE. Members of EURASHE are national associations of higher education institutions and individual institutions, such as universities, (university) colleges and universities of applied sciences, as well as other professional associations and stakeholder organisations active in the field of higher education.

Crazy Town builds entrepreneurial coworking communities that collaborate with universities. We have four locations in Finland with total of 200 company and organizational members. We bring together solopreneurs, micro-sized companies, startups and teams from larger organizations, who want to cooperate, learn new and grow their business together. Also universities and their UBC professionals are our members.

Crazy Town has operated since 2004. During these years we have organized hundreds of projects related to university-businesscooperation as a contractor, but also utilized all sorts of cooperation methods with universities to develop our own business. We truly believe that university-business-cooperation is a people’s game. In other words, it happens when people responsible for creating and delivering UBC have great boundary spanning skills. With the help of Spanning Boundaries project, we hope to increase this kind of capability throughout Finland and Europe. We also hope to connect our company members and Finnish universities with our European partners and networks.

Momentum is one of Ireland’s leading innovation and entrepreneurship specialists, recognised as thought leading strategists and educators in transformation through innovation.  Our work with HEIs, Government bodies and Regional Development Agencies, as advisors, strategic planners and applied innovation specialists yields new multi actor, multidisciplinary collaboration structures that effect change.   We are recognised for our work in developing regional engagement programmes for HEI teams to catalyze a transformative approach to regional economy reactivation.

Meath County Council (MCC) is a statutory body, tasked with delivering quality services to the communities of County Meath.  With a budget of over €50m and over 500 staff, MCC has been unrelenting in pursuing new ideas, policies, strategies and solutions in order to ensure improved efficiencies and cost savings are achieved.  The Council is committed to working with Community Groups, a wide range of statutory agencies and NGOs as well as constantly improving engagement with neighbouring authorities, as a means to achieving results beyond what could be achieved working alone.

The Spanish Chamber of Commerce is a public law entity, with its own legal personality (Law 4/14) and with full capacity to carry out its activities. It acts as an intermediary between the private sector and the national government, coordinates the actions and initiatives of the Chamber of Commerce networks and fosters relations between them. Law 4/2014 establishes the exercise of certain public-administrative functions of special relevance. Within these functions, those related to training are particularly important.

The Chamber of Commerce of Spain, in addition to working in training as attributed by the Law, is aware of the importance of the relationship between the university and the company, proof of this is the experience that the Chamber has in the field of the cooperation and relationship of the business and university fabric, participating in the following projects: EMCOSU Project, WEXHE Project and Boundary Spanning Project.