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Institutional Innovation in University-based Experimental Spaces: the Case of Oulu Game Lab

In: Triple Helix
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Valeriia Pokidina Oulu Business School, University of Oulu Finland

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Juha Tuunainen Oulu Business School, University of Oulu Finland

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Tuija Mainela Oulu Business School, University of Oulu Finland

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Abstract

This article explores preconditions and developmental dynamics of institutional innovation in higher education organizations as an outcome of a collaborative educational initiative – a university-based experimental space. Such collaborative learning configurations are often designed to stimulate local economic development after a downturn in regional industrial landscapes. The experimental space studied here had a twofold mission: providing re-skilling and re-education opportunities for unemployed ICT professionals and equipping them with business and employment bonds with regional game industry companies. To imbue a static outcome of institutional innovation with dynamic features, and to further develop the concept of Triple Helix spaces, we incorporated three sequential forms of institutional work in our analysis: boundary work, distancing work, and anchoring work.

1 Introduction

In the context of knowledge-based societies and increased access to tertiary education, universities are increasingly localized in the center of post-industrial reorientation of society (Maassen and Stensaker, 2011; Etzkowitz, 2013; Feola et al., 2020; Fumasoli et al., 2020). Coupled with administrative decentralization and region-specific developmental agendas, local higher educational organizations are required to assume a more engaged role in the socio-economic transformation of the communities they are operating within and are reliant upon (Chatterton and Goddard, 2000; Guerrero et al., 2016; Rinaldi et al., 2018; Ardito et al., 2019). Thus, traditional dyad of research and education is becoming synchronized with the university’s third mission of service to society (Cerver Romero et al., 2020; Compagnucci and Spigarelli, 2020; Forliano et al., 2021; Miller et al., 2021), which implies usability of generated and disseminated knowledge – in terms of enhanced prospects of graduates’ employment (Rae, 2010; Huq and Gilbert, 2013; Refai and Thompson, 2015; Guerrero et al., 2020), business initiation (Rasmussen and Sørheim, 2012; Klofsten et al., 2019; Cunningham et al., 2022) and applicability of research (Rothaermel et al., 2007; Alexander et al., 2015; Adesola and Datta, 2020). Embarking on this transformational path, universities face challenges instigating incremental institutional and operational reorganization (Clark, 1998; Hannon, 2013; Stolze and Sailer, 2021; Cunningham et al., 2022). Some of the challenges ensuing from this are distilled into demand-supply pressures from the labor markets, financial austerity due to constantly withdrawing governmental funding, and globalization dynamics due to more permeable boundaries of higher education systems (Brennan et al., 2014; Kleinman et al., 2018; Miller et al., 2021).

These system-wide perturbations provide an impetus for more fluid, adaptive and accessible organizational arrangements (Brockliss, 2000; Hölttä, 2000; Lam, 2010; Etzkowitz, 2014). These features are incorporated into a concept of “entrepreneurial university” (Etzkowitz, 1983; Clark, 1998) – the one which is sensitive to local needs, recognizes and supports emerging developmental opportunities and embraces regional business-generating initiatives (Castro-Spila and Unceta, 2014; Towers et al., 2020). In contrast to organizational archetype of the research university with its emphasis on scholarly research and research-based higher education, the entrepreneurial university actively seeks to advance economic usefulness by means of which it justifies its regional embeddedness combined with so-called new public management (Alexander, 2000; Etzkowitz and Viale, 2010; Frølich et al., 2013; Pinheiro and Stensaker, 2013). Endorsement of an entrepreneurial state of mind may provide opportunities for experimentation with organizational diversity and attune the university to opportunity-seeking, risk-taking, and innovation-conducive modes (Bronstein and Reihlen, 2014; Stolze and Sailer, 2021; Cunningham et al., 2022). This movement towards a proactive, entrepreneurial posture and readiness to cope with pressing internal and external challenges has stimulated establishment of novel organizational configurations, advancement of educational offerings and enhancement of synergy between academic and managerial operational modes. Altogether, these wide-ranging transformational processes have been unified under the term institutional innovation in higher education (Brennan et al., 2014).

In searching for innovative solutions to regional knowledge-based development, universities are expected to assume a more visible and pro-active stance in collaborative arrangements with actors and organizations located in other institutional spheres, such as industry and government. These collaborative arrangements are unified under the conceptual framework of the Triple Helix model of regional development (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, 2000). Etzkowitz and Ranga (2010) introduced the concept of Triple Helix spaces – i.e., knowledge, consensus and innovation spaces – to account for development in which regions embark on a path of knowledge-based advancement. The aim of the concept is to reflect diachronic transitory dynamics among different Triple Helix configurations, through which higher education institutions and other knowledge-generating organizations are instructed to become key players in innovative transformation of their corresponding localities.

However, operational realization of such spaces is influenced by regional socio-economic idiosyncrasies and unique historical preconditions (Kleinman et al., 2018; Adesola and Datta, 2020; Cerver Romero et al., 2020; Stolze and Sailer, 2021). Distinctive contextual attributes determine the degree and scope of transformative strategies that individual higher education organizations are inclined to undertake and sustain (Clark, 1998, 2003, 2004; Hannon, 2013; Bronstein and Reihlen, 2014; Cai and Liu, 2020).

Despite theoretical and empirical attempts to ascertain how institutional innovation in higher education emerges and unfolds over time (Brennan et al., 2014; Cai, 2017; Hasanefendic et al., 2017; Cai and Lönnqvist, 2021), a more structured framework combining institutional contexts and process-oriented agentic strategies in institutional innovation is still lacking (Cai and Mehari, 2015; Cai, 2017; Cai and Lönnqvist, 2021). This deficit translates into a realm in which collective actors inhabiting higher education organizations are faced with confusion on how to implement and sustain changes that matter and last. Recent extensions of institutional theory that account for human agency in organizational change supply necessary instruments to improve theoretical vision on the area of institutional innovation in higher education (Cai and Mehari, 2015; Hasanefendic et al., 2017; Glynn and D’Aunno, 2023). Using such perspective, in this article we have exploited and extended the concept of institutional work (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006; Lawrence et al., 2011) to provide higher education scholarship with institutional analysis and to understand the nature of change initiatives in higher education better. The research question of this study is: How does the design of the university-based experimental spaces induce institutional innovation?

To answer the question, this article provides an empirical adaptation of the Triple Helix spaces framework, whereby innovation space is exemplified by a Finnish university-based experimental space – the Oulu Game Lab. The Oulu Game Lab was established as one of the business-diversification mechanisms to curb the consequences of the structural upheaval in the City of Oulu after the collapse of the dominant regional employer, the Nokia Corporation. It was designed as a novel educational platform at the developmental periphery of the Oulu University of Applied Sciences (OUAS), and it pursued two missions: provision of re-skilling and re-education courses for unemployed ICT professionals and equipping them with business connections and employment opportunities with local game companies. Even though the number of unemployed ICT professionals gradually declined, this twofold mission continued and managed to secure its relevance for an increasing proportion of OUAS students willing to pursue a career in game industry.

An explanation of any potential institutional innovations demands an acknowledgement of the high degree of institutionalization and the maturity of higher education systems (Kleinman et al., 2018; Tal and Tubin, 2021) and generally constraining postures about status quo disturbance that their internal structures are historically imbued with (Clark, 1998, 2003, 2004). Therefore, to unpack internal dynamics of a specific innovation space, we have added to the concept of the university-based experimental space an analytical framework of institutional work, composed of boundary work, distancing work, and anchoring work (Cartel et al., 2019).

This analytical framework allowed us to unbox gradual advance from the initiation of the university-based experimental space to the institutional innovation it produced. Providing a detailed analysis of the institutional work involved during such process, in this article we have contributed to the literature on institutional innovation, enriching it with an illustrative analysis from the higher education field (Brennan et al., 2014; Hasanefendic et al., 2017; Adesola and Datta, 2020; Glynn and D’Aunno, 2023). Additionally, unfolding the path to institutional innovation in the innovation space, the article expands the Triple Helix spaces framework, zooming into the micro-dynamics of its adaptation in the university-based experimental space. Moreover, our study also evaluates the potential readiness of the exemplified university to transform itself into a more entrepreneurial mode of operation – the move extensively theorized and advocated in the corresponding literature (Bronstein and Reihlen, 2014; Fumasoli et al., 2020; Stolze, 2021; Cunningham et al., 2022).

The remainder of the article is structured as follows: Part 2 provides a definition of institutional innovation in higher education and relates it to the concept of university-based experimental space. Part 3 supplies the concept of the university-based experimental space with a three-step model of institutional work. Part 4 is dedicated to the methodology applied, and Part 5 outlines the findings. Part 6 discusses underpinnings of theoretical configuration applied and its practical relevance for innovation-seeking universities. The article concludes with policy implications, limitations of the study and avenues for further research.

2 Institutional Innovation in Higher Education

Declaring their proactive, entrepreneurial posture and readiness to cope with pressing internal and external challenges, universities have been seen to indulge in an incremental process of institutional innovation, defined as:

a new or significantly improved product, process, organizational method or an organization itself developed by or having a significant impact on the activities of a higher education institution and/or other higher education stakeholders (Brennan et al., 2014: 35).

Since higher education institutions represent institutionally organized social entities (Kleinman et al., 2018; Tal and Tubin, 2021), with particular values, norms and traditions (Henry, 2005; Hasanefendic et al., 2017; Holley, 2017), institutional innovations are usually launched as stepwise changes in one of the core activities of the university and along one or two transformational pathways (Clark, 1998), with possible diffusion to adjacent higher education functions (Brennan et al., 2014; Kleinman et al., 2018). This “cumulative incrementalism” (Clark, 2003: 112) is often heterogeneous and non-linear (Tuunainen, 2005; Degn, 2018; Kleinman et al., 2018), without radical steps and perturbations (Clark, 2003; Brennan et al., 2014; Pinto, 2017; Serdyukov, 2017).

This article follows this line of thought by unpacking the dynamics of institutional innovation in higher education that once materialized on the extended developmental periphery of the university (Clark, 1998). Elaborated by Clark (1998) as one of the pathways a university may consider on its journey to an entrepreneurial state of being, extended developmental periphery translates into a constellation of non-traditional organizational units that stimulate interaction with a wide range of external allies. From interdisciplinary educational programs to urban regeneration projects, from alumni unions to international research offices – these “mediating institutions” (Clark, 1998: 9), shielded from constraining institutionalized scripts and irrevocable system-wide consequences, provide approachable cross-boundary settings prone to trials, experiments, and novel ideas.

One of the distinguishing features of developmental peripheries is their collaboration-conducive environment. Bringing together actors from several institutional spheres, peripheral venues provide a testbed for creative problem-solving and enactment of collaborative projects (Schiller and Leišytė, 2020). One of the frameworks of such potentially fruitful collaborations is the Triple Helix model (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, 2000). The model, inspired by opportunities for regional knowledge-based development, calls for a partnership between university, industry and government bodies, and provides a perspective for understanding the implementation of innovative initiatives. From a more empirical viewpoint, analyzing the development of such initiatives, Etzkowitz and Ranga (2010) introduced the concept of Triple Helix spaces: knowledge, consensus and innovation spaces – as necessary stages of a region’s socio-economic renewal and as precursors for a transition towards knowledge-based innovation systems. Each space is characterized as an environment in which institutional roles of the university, industry and government are combined in an interdependent, collaborative manner to attain jointly a primary function of the corresponding space. Thus, the functional goal of novelty production in the knowledge space is a joint effort of local higher education institutions, governmental research centers, and industrial R&D departments, in which the university provides an integrative, neutral site for knowledge-producing institutions to collaborate. As posited by Etzkowitz and Ranga (2010), the availability of a critical mass of interdependent knowledge space actors provides a footing for proceeding with further innovation-based regional renewal strategies, therefore the knowledge space’s creation should be prioritized before any subsequent strategic steps are undertaken.

Availability of knowledge space stimulates formation of another Triple Helix collaborative milieu – consensus space, which is formed under a convening leadership of local government bodies, as institutional actors imbued with a more salient normative and regulative control function. Consensus space is a tripartite negotiation environment in which representatives of universities, industry and government collaborate and share their ideas related to the dimensions of regional knowledge-based advancement. Projects that secure support and mutual commitment in the consensus space are further realized in the innovation space – a venue of a hybridized organizational format that combines resources from all Triple Helix spheres and invests them in the implementation of the agreed local renewal initiative.

Triple Helix spaces, thus, provide a structured conceptual framework for unpacking preconditions that set a platform for an institutional innovation materialized at the developmental periphery of the university. Since the term innovation space encompasses a broad category of the Triple Helix initiatives designed for a knowledge-based regional development, this article employs a more focused concept of the university-based experimental space to specify a particular institutional setting where innovation was initiated and crystalized. Since institutional innovation presents a goal in itself and is a lure for an incremental, dynamic investigation, the concept of university-based experimental space indicates its starting arrangements, with stepwise, chronological proceeding to the end result.

Broadly defined, experimental spaces are “transitory social settings where field actors experiment with alternative action models (…) while other field actors seek to protect the status quo”, and where “participants experiment with prototypes, fail, learn from their failures and iteratively develop effective solutions” (Cartel et al., 2019: 3–4). Institutional innovation materializes when practices and solutions developed inside the experimental space penetrate a wider institutional field and establish new organizational linkages and operational modes (Cartel et al., 2019; Tal and Tubin, 2021). As a result of the establishment of innovation-producing experimental spaces, organizations acquire valuable role models that encourage them to indulge into innovative practices, which may create a spiral of change and stimulate organizational learning (Lewis and Moultrie, 2005; Stephenson et al., 2020), creativity (Peschl and Fundneider, 2014; Kallio et al., 2015; Thoring et al., 2020) and renewal (Hagel and Brown, 2013).

The concept of university-based experimental space illustrates an important dimension of the university’s transformation towards an entrepreneurial state of mind: exploratory, trial-and-error environments that process complexity of incoming demands and iteratively transfer university to a locus of “a steady state of change” (Clark, 2003: 109). University-based experimental spaces are identified as deliberately designed organizational settings within the boundaries of the university where actors distance themselves from dominant institutional arrangements and perform non-traditional practices, exerting the effort to instigate institutional change.

Higher education institutions are increasingly urged to provide innovative educational models to prepare their graduates for coping with real-life “wicked problems” (Turner et al., 2022: 1) and “challenges of the fast-changing and unpredictable globalized world” (Serdyukov, 2017: 1). This requires reconsideration of institutional structures which support novel pedagogical solutions. Instructional modes characterized by traditional lectures are being gradually re-configured to more dynamic study environments equipped with resources for student-centered, interdisciplinary and project-based learning (Winks et al., 2019; Filho et al., 2020; Memon and Memon, 2022). Conceptualized as university-based experimental spaces, with their explorative nature, these environments provide a proving ground for a better-informed curriculum transformation.

Empirically analyzed exemplars of such experimental spaces encompass a broad spectrum of educational initiatives dedicated to work-, problem- and project-based pedagogies (Ashton, 2011; Workman, 2011; Castro-Spila, 2018; Franco Valdez and Valdez Cervantes, 2018), multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary programs (Brennan et al., 2014; Hero and Lindfors, 2019; Lindvig et al., 2019; Turner et al., 2022), university campus living labs (König and Evans, 2013; Verhoef and Bossert, 2019; Filho et al., 2020) and other institutional facilities designed to experiment with unconventional teaching practices, extend the developmental periphery of the university and strengthen its cross-boundary interaction (Memon and Memon, 2022). Since “[t]hese facilities at the [higher education institutions] HEI s are increasingly considered as an indispensable component of the Triple Helix initiatives” and “[r]ealizing the importance of such entrepreneurship and innovation facilities in transforming traditional universities and HEI s into the entrepreneurial ones” (Memon and Memon, 2022: 105), the concept of university-based experimental space unveils how universities design and sustain their extended developmental periphery and try to endorse an entrepreneurial mindset. Moreover, the operational and organizational adaptiveness of the institutional spheres of Triple Helix is delegated to implement innovative collaborative projects for a smooth functioning of the overall change in the Triple Helix relations (Memon and Memon, 2022).

3 Institutional Work

Despite acceptance of innovation, because universities’ historically formed traditions, they still represent highly institutionalized organizations, which are frequently lured towards stability (Clark, 2004; Henry, 2005; Ma and Cai, 2021; Hagerer, 2022). Because of this situation, stepwise institutional work, originally defined as “the purposive action of individuals and organizations aimed at creating, maintaining and disrupting institutions” (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006: 215), is often taken to push universities towards institutional innovation. The creation of the university-based experimental space, as exemplified in this article, is categorized as institutional work as it diverges from dominant institutional action models and disrupts prevailing operational and organizational arrangements (Cartel et al., 2019).

The framework of three-step institutional work, which was instrumental in demarcating sequential stages of institutional innovation in the experimental space established within climate regulation research (Cartel et al., 2019), provides a well-fitted toolkit for uncovering the dynamics of institutional innovation in higher education, considering its inherited adherence to deep-seated institutional postures. Therefore, supplying the concept of the university-based experimental space with a three-step model of institutional work, which comprises boundary work, distancing work, and anchoring work (Cartel et al., 2019), this article examines: 1) internal processes related to the inception and evolution of the experimental space and 2) the institutional innovation potential of the experimental space.

Boundary work. According to Cartel et al. (2019), the purpose of boundary work is to set up the terms of spatial and temporal access to the experimental space with tentative meeting agendas, as well as requirements for prospective members. Such work is instrumental in alleviating institutional pressures (Bucher and Langley, 2016), especially when the members of experimental spaces prefer to adhere to their long-standing institutional backgrounds and therefore are often disinclined to conduct organizational experiments. In the context of the university-based experimental space in particular, boundary work is twofold: first, it regulates terms of membership applied to the newcomers and designates physical mapping of the space’s premises (Cartel et al., 2019) and second, it refers to the space’s initial efforts to establish stable, resourceful, and legitimate connections with university’s management and administration (Gieryn, 1983).

Distancing work. According to Cartel et al. (2019), uptake of distancing work is necessary when the experimental space’s members have commitment to the field’s prevailing institutional models. In such situations, distancing work brackets participants from their customary action scripts and substitutes them with alternative action models. Although many higher education institutions are gradually assuming more adaptive and flexible attitudes about experiments, deep-seated bonds are still prevailing in certain areas. Since this may impede the overall effectiveness of the university-based experimental space’s innovative methods, carefully designed distancing work aimed at members’ disentanglement from traditional behavioral patterns is often of high relevance.

Anchoring work. The main functional impetus for indulging in anchoring work is to promote acknowledgement and endorsement of experimental space’s alternative model on a broader institutional level (Cartel et al., 2019). According to Cartel et al. (2019), anchoring work stimulates acceptance and facilitation of institutional innovation created inside the experimental space within a wider audience of stakeholders and potential allies, which advances the chances of the solution to be employed on a field-wide scale. Whereas boundary and distancing work are instrumental in unboxing processual architecture of the university-based experimental space related to its inception, design and evolution, the target of anchoring work is to examine the space’s efforts to embed its novel action model on a system level and consequentially obtain formal legitimation of the approaches the space has produced.

4 Methodology

4.1 Data Collection

The main purpose of the data collection was to ascertain how the design and evolution of the Oulu Game Lab, conceptualized as a university-based experimental space, produced institutional innovation in higher education. This research interest ensued from the recent aspirations in organization studies to understand the novel forms of labs, hubs and spaces that are sprouting in the peripheries and in interstices of more established institutional orders (e.g., Youtie and Shapira, 2008; Fuglsang and Hansen, 2022). When searching for a suitable object for our research we produced the Oulu Game Lab as a novel collaborative educational initiative in the Finnish city of Oulu designed to stimulate local economic development after cluster spikes of Nokia – the major regional employer – had been largely erased from its dominant position in the city’s business landscape. Considering the magnitude of the destabilized socio-economic situation in the region, negotiations between representatives of BusinessOulu, i.e., the City of Oulu’s arm for supporting entrepreneurship, Oulu University of Applied Sciences (OUAS) and the regional game industry companies, were concluded in an agreement about the Oulu Game Lab’s twofold mission: provision of re-skilling and re-education opportunities for unemployed ICT professionals and supplying them with entrepreneurial and employment bonds with local game industry representatives. This mission remained relevant in less economically destabilized times, complemented by educational content adapted for an increasing proportion of younger and less professionally experienced students of the OUAS. The primary source of information related to the Oulu Game Lab’s developmental dynamics was interview data supported by archival materials consensually provided by the interviewees on request.

Interviews. Online and in-person meetings were held during a one-year period, from May 2020 until April 2021. Due to safety and logistical constraints imposed by the pandemic, researchers and respondents mostly adhered to a remote communication mode, with five online and three onsite meetings. Overall, eleven hours of semi-structured interviews with key actors of the Oulu Game Lab were collected. Since the Oulu Game Lab may be considered to be a relatively small-scale initiative nested as a single course within the OUAS Department of Culture, it was possible to get in touch with all the members of the space’s core internal team responsible for its daily operations. The interviewees’ roles were often intertwined and cross-subsidized, but they still captured operational processes related to the design and implementation of the experimental space investigated. Overall, two founders (Founder 1 and Founder 2), and two general managers (Manager 1 and Manager 2) were interviewed following a pre-compiled outline. Even though the duties of founders and general managers were oftentimes overlapping, the responsibility of monitoring and managing day-to-day administrative and operational tasks of the Oulu Game Lab (e.g., coordinating and assisting students and teachers, controlling utilization of the Oulu Game Lab’s physical resources, scheduling educational events, troubleshooting and reporting) were the primary concern areas of general managers, whereas founders’ roles focused on strategizing, leadership, external relations and budgeting. Questions were formulated and structured in a way that allowed participants to reconcile the chronological order of the space’s developmental process with their personal viewpoints to each stage. All the interviews were audio recorded and manually transcribed.

Archival data. Additionally, the participants provided archival documents that were produced by the Oulu Game Lab’s team throughout its active functioning phase. These included 131 slides from PowerPoint presentations with intermediate results and roadmaps for further development, spreadsheets with initial curriculum design and its sequential amendments, and 114 pages of a detailed description of the Oulu Game Lab’s teaching methods, learning outcomes and assessment approaches. These documents were complemented by ten media releases related to the Oulu Game Lab’s achievements and their impact in terms of Oulu’s economic and social development.

4.2 Data Analysis

By applying a process-oriented methodological perspective (e.g., Berends and Deken, 2021), our aim with this article was to uncover processual dynamics behind institutional innovation materialized in the university-based experimental space. Following this purpose, we extended the Triple Helix spaces framework (Etzkowitz and Ranga, 2010) with analysis of institutional work (Cartel et al., 2019). Data analysis was done manually and followed a two-stage procedure.

During the first stage, we assembled data into a chronological narrative of the contextual socio-economic and regional developmental preconditions (knowledge space and consensus space), which had resulted in the initiation of the Oulu Game Lab as a university-based experimental space (i.e., innovation space). Characteristics of the knowledge space were framed by a combination of interview data and archival documents related to formation and development of the City of Oulu’s higher education organizations, R&D performers, historical aspects of the city’s labor force composition, business ecosystem and knowledge-based developmental prospects. Then, relying primarily on interview data, the main actors and negotiation terms of the consensus space were discerned. Initiation of the university-based experimental space, namely innovation space, as a convening collaborative arrangement of the consensus space, concluded the first stage of data analysis.

The second stage of data analysis was guided by the framework of the three-step institutional work, which was already conceptualized in the literature (Cartel et al., 2019). Manually transcribed interviews were analyzed according to theoretically grounded characteristics of corresponding forms of institutional work – i.e., boundary work, distancing work, and anchoring work. Thus, boundary work includes chronological sequence of decisions related to the Oulu Game Lab’s formal establishment, participatory arrangements and operational connections to the university; distancing work comprises the space’s approaches in curriculum design, as well as its initial tangible results; and anchoring work distils activities that were aimed at expansion and promotion of the Oulu Game Lab’s educational model on a university-wide level, with its further facilitation as an institutional innovation in higher education.

5 Findings

As discussed, our article extends the Triple Helix spaces framework with the concept of institutional work. Therefore, we proceeded with institutional work analysis to ascertain the processual dynamics of the institutional innovation the space developed.

5.1 Knowledge Space

As stipulated by Etzkowitz and Ranga (2010), knowledge space is a milieu of the region’s education, training, and R&D resources, which determine directions and magnitude of its perspective knowledge-based development.

Universities in Oulu. In 1958, Oulu became the center for the first research intensive university in northern Finland – the University of Oulu. From its inception, the University of Oulu had a strong research and education footing in electrical engineering and telecommunications, which gradually paved the way to a steady high-tech development and formation of a powerful regional ICT cluster. Entrenching its proficiency in the most promising areas at that time, a small city in northern Finland swiftly became a site of the most progressive technological inventions, which nurtured a highly qualified blend of engineers and ICT professionals, which in turn produced and attracted small and medium-sized companies. This evolutionary shift led to increased demand for a less research-centric expertise. The professionals required were trained by a local Institute of Technology, currently known as the Oulu University of Applied Sciences, which complemented the University of Oulu’s more scientifically focused educational offering with vocational courses, specifically designed for those students who sought hands-on, functional competencies (Sasano, 2016).

Public research facilities in Oulu. After almost 15 years of both Oulu universities’ research and training, a promotional campaign for establishing a new branch for the country’s largest governmental research organization – VTT, the Technical Research Centre of Finland – began in the city. This inducement endeavor, coupled with then-prioritized regional development policies, successfully concluded in the establishment of the VTT Electronics Research Laboratory in 1974 (Sasano, 2016). The Laboratory, with a moderate budget, immediately embarked on a strategic path of pro-business development, with a sound encouragement in cooperating with the private sector and providing substantial support for spin-off firms emanating from its research activities. Close cooperation with the University of Oulu in such research areas like embedded software, mechatronics and printed circuit board design was instrumental in attracting higher-league domestic companies to Oulu, among which Nokia’s advent played a historically vital role in the region’s economic development (Sasano, 2016).

University and industry collaborations in Oulu. Embraced as a long-awaited developmental accomplishment (Sasano, 2016), the arrival of Nokia to Oulu as a hallmark of national economic growth eventually became a coerced regional dependence. Nokia started to unfold its operations in Oulu in 1973, with subsequent production of base station systems for the Nordic Mobile Telecommunication System and radio phones for the Finnish defense forces (Sasano, 2016; Linden, 2021). The city was transformed into Nokia’s most important development hub and its second largest manufacturing outpost, with fully-fledged R&D and phone software production units. During the period of its highest growth in the 1990s and early 2000s, settled in a city of just 200,000 residents, the company had almost 5,000 directly employed workers and established subcontracting agreements with almost 2,000 regional firms.

Regarding the higher education sector, Nokia maintained strong collaborative ties with the city’s two universities: the University of Oulu and Oulu Polytechnic (formerly the Institute of Technology, renamed to the Oulu University of Applied Sciences in 2006), which consistently supplied the regional corporation branch with highly qualified engineers and innovative R&D services (Sasano, 2016; Linden, 2021). Such interconnectedness between the Oulu community and one powerful company had created a strong reliance on its infrastructure and vulnerability to any disruptions or technology market shifts.

Negative effects of that dependency were obvious by 2012. According to Juha Ala-Mursula, CEO of BusinessOulu, the gradual ramp down of the dominant employer and its supporting subcontractors affected an estimated 85,000 Oulu residents (Linden, 2021). By 2013, which marks the cessation of Nokia’s core production in the region after almost 40 years of uninterrupted operation, the multinational corporation had been deeply woven into the city’s fabrics, with a multiplicity of region-wide subcontractors, assigned R&D units and aligned university programs. The upheaval created a business vacuum exacerbated by a highly homogeneous, unemployed workforce. This combination resulted in constrained reemployment opportunities and a prolonged demand-supply imbalance in the local labor market. From a more positive perspective, Nokia had saturated the Oulu region with highly skilled, experienced, talented workers who were eager to explore unfamiliar business trajectories, calibrate and update their knowledge, and most importantly, were determined to stay in Oulu and invest their skills in the region’s resurrection. By the time the mass layoffs had been launched, multiple supportive programs for ex-Nokians had been established, both at the national and municipal levels.

The long-standing tradition of education and research, which was cultivated before Nokia had taken over the reins of economic control in the region (Nilsson, 2006; Sasano, 2016), played a vital role in reshaping Oulu’s developmental opportunities after a sharp structural upheaval. This tradition had formed a highly demanded skill set of the population and a strong trust in the university system and its important role in generating these opportunities (Linden, 2021). Turning to the university for re-education and update of skills was therefore a viable option for most of ex-Nokians.

The downsizing of Nokia had forced the Oulu community to redesign its business ecosystem from scratch, which in turn, implied providing considerable support to entrepreneurial and start-up initiatives. Diversification of Oulu’s business landscape was observed as the most urgent and necessary crisis-coping strategy, instrumental in sustaining a more self-feeding entrepreneurial ecosystem and serving “as a better protective shield against future economic downturns” (Laitinen, 2019: 61). By the time Nokia had started axing its divisions in Oulu, the game industry was already one of the developmental areas that demonstrated visible growth potential.

It was a time of a high growth of the mobile game industry in Finland. I think that in 2010 there were something like 40 game companies in Finland. And in 2013 there were about 250. That’s a huge expansion in only three years, all because of a very rapid growth of mobile game industry, because of iPad, iPhone and because of App Store and Google Play store. Technical development basically opened the market. Finnish game companies had a competitive edge because they had made mobile phone games for Nokia, so they had knowledge about that. That was why some Finnish companies started to succeed so fast. [Manager 1]

Preconditions were mainly human-centric and based on a rising emotional opposition to invasive Nokia’s talent-hunting, all-absorbing practices, even before the gloomy perspectives of the company’s existence became sensible. Thus, young and ambitious graduates were resisting the scarcity of professional choice and were looking for alternative career paths, despite the alluring and more remunerative positions offered by Nokia.

It was a known fact that even before you graduate, Nokia sucked every programmer out of the University to work for them. It would have been difficult to graduate after that … yes, the salary was good but the idea of programming software for living – that’s where the creativity died. (…) Even though the slogan is great – “Connecting people” – (…) work with Nokia wasn’t really … (…) I knew that I don’t want to end up being a programmer, because the obvious choice would have then been going to Nokia … But instead, I had history as a major … Becoming a history teacher … that would have been fine. [Founder 1]

By 2006, under the aegis of the Environment for Lucrative Virtual Interaction (ELVI) project, which was designed as an intensive introductory course into the global game business by the University of Oulu, first game companies were launched, with some of them eventually gaining international acknowledgment and stable positioning in the domestic market. The ELVI project, thus, opened a black box of a novel and fertile developmental dimension and provided an impetus for those seeking divergence from the Nokia pathway.

We had a grandfather figure here in Oulu, Tony Manninen, who was the first game professor in Finland. So, [originally] LudoCraft [Ltd.] was a research unit here at Oulu University, and they researched games. What he [Manninen] did was that he applied for EU funding and Finnish public funding to start a project called ELVI. It brought gurus from all over the world to Oulu to teach us how it [the game industry] works. He worked for two years to get that project funded. [Founder 1]

Therefore, by the time Nokia declared its inability to maintain mobile phone software production capacities in the region, the game industry was already capable of providing an ancillary backup strategy for the city’s partial economic recovery. Even though game companies were not numerous in Oulu in 2011–2012, and the whole industry was still in its infancy, existing firms were drawing up a promising recovery strategy, considering the region’s strong ICT background and global market trends.

5.2 Consensus Space

The first stage of the regional strategy was to design an interactive university-based experimental space which could upgrade skills of ex-Nokians, expand their social networks, and stimulate launching their own game companies. These were clearly outlined third mission demands placed on the local universities at the time of an economic downturn in the region. Since the game industry had already topped the roster of promising developmental areas, game education was considered to be one of the support packages assembled to provide employment and business opportunities for the sake of the region’s recovery.

It helped a lot that the City of Oulu had a kind of earthquake, because of Nokia’s collapse. So, there was momentum for making something new and even risky – new trials, piloting. Everybody was looking for a job … not everybody, but there was willingness to establish new companies, and new things were started. Open doors and open mindset for new – good momentum. [Founder 2]

The decision to launch an educational course was negotiated and approved via tripartite negotiations involving representatives of the Oulu’s game industry, Oulu University of Applied Sciences (OUAS) and BusinessOulu. Realization of that decision was delegated to the OUAS, which was promptly followed by establishment of the experimental space – the Oulu Game Lab, under the umbrella of the University’s Department of Culture. Along with provision of re-skilling and re-education opportunities for a precious pool of talented but freshly unemployed ICT professionals, the university-based experimental space was also tailored for exploring business-generating capabilities in the global game industry.

One thing in Oulu that had worked really well is that there is a private sector, the companies, there’s the public sector, and then there’s education. So, this has always worked really, really well. The Oulu Game Lab basically started with BusinessOulu realizing that the biggest employer in Oulu was going to collapse, even before it collapsed. BusinessOulu is the economic development unit of the City of Oulu. So, what they did was [that] they asked Oulu University of Applied Sciences to design a kind of education model that would transform know-how from one area to another. BusinessOulu threw money to OUAS, and they used that money to hire me, to design that education. So basically, the public sector gave money for education, and they hired a guy from the private sector. Over the course of the Oulu Game Lab [’s development] this cooperation worked really, really well. [Founder 1]

5.3 Innovation Space

As noted earlier, our study narrows down the broad category of innovation space, introduced by Etzkowitz and Ranga (2010), to a more focused concept of the university-based experimental space, exemplified by the Oulu Game Lab. This move allowed us to indicate the space’s positioning within a local higher education context, as well as transformative effects this positioning might provoke by means of using the three-step model of institutional work, namely boundary work, distancing work and anchoring work.

Pre-study of game industry expectations and needs. Since employment and business creation were prioritized by actors involved in the initiation of the Oulu Game Lab, a clear understanding of the industry operating capacities, labor market needs, and entrepreneurial opportunities was crucial. Moreover, due to the applied nature of the prospective educational offering, a thorough pre-study served as an efficient promotional and communication tool in mapping the nodes of potential mentoring and coaching support from the local game industry professionals.

The project was how to re-educate professionals, and for that project there was time until June 2012, to create the model and everything: the curricula, students, content. A big part of that was [done] something like during March. It was a pre-study [about] what is the need of the companies. So, going to the companies or calling them … What do you need? What’s your forecast for your business? How to make you happy? And then coming back actually for the second time: “This is the idea that we are having, this kind of model for education. What do you think? Give us feedback.” At that time there were something like 15 companies. They were all very small. [Founder 2]

Boundary work. In the case of the Oulu Game Lab, boundary work was directed at soothing tensions from the university’s traditional institutional scripts and was accomplished in three dimensions: 1) construction of the physical boundary with the university; 2) creating the rules of participation; and 3) maintaining ties with university management.

Construction of the physical boundary with the university. The bricks and mortar architecture of the experimental space was considered to be an important constituent part of the prospective learning environment. Its goal was to nurture students’ entrepreneurial mindset and surround them with real-life working conditions and expertise (Heikkinen and Stevenson, 2016). Therefore, despite the opportunity to have an on-campus location, next to the auditoriums of the host OUAS Department of Culture, an off-campus, downtown placement of the Oulu Game Lab was regarded as the most appropriate decision, motivated by the proximity of proliferating companies, business support organizations, accelerators, co-working spaces and lively community venues. Moreover, the distinctive features of the game industry were based on its creative nature. Dependency on a fast-pace and turbulent environment of technology expansion, volatile consumer preferences, unstable market conditions and increasing competition required constant update of the educational content, often axing an obsolete set of skills in favor of more demanded ones. These conditions called for continuous and flexible interaction with those who worked “in the field” and whose tasks were reliant upon quick adaptation to unpredictable game industry shifts.

This was the whole idea: we go where the companies are, so that the teams see that yes, coding is still hard work, it’s not glamorous, yes, the company next door is doing exactly the same stuff. But you still need to do it, and then you have professional connections already during your Game Lab phase. So, if they go to the university’s own space, there’s no one there, no game companies there. They are not gonna get networks, it would be very difficult to get coaches to help them for free, because going there takes half an hour, getting back – half an hour, the location in this case is crucial as well. [Founder 1]

Creating the rules of participation. The game industry encompasses a wide range of interdependent competencies which are tightly layered to make a process of game creation more productive. This process requires sets of skills ranging from programming and graphic design to marketing and project management, thus, making the learning process highly interdisciplinary. Apart from entrance skill requirements that could be assembled into self-sustaining, independent teams of students, the selection procedure also incorporated criteria related to motivation, career plans and tentative business ideas. Teams were composed of the third and fourth year OUAS students who had already attained basic theoretical knowledge in the required areas, open university students – predominantly employed professionals who sought professional development, and unemployed people from the local employment office who agreed to accept a novel re-education offering. General rules for joining the Oulu Game Lab didn’t change substantially from the moment of its launch in Autumn 2012, however, the proportion of unemployed professionals seeking re-skilling varied throughout the period of the Oulu Game Lab’s functioning, outnumbered eventually by university students, both domestic and international ones.

Maintaining ties with university management. Despite the initial formal permission to maintain physical remoteness from the university’s main structures and pedagogical divergence from its traditional educational modes, the Oulu Game Lab was still subordinate to the host university and had to preserve its loyalty and trust.

In the beginning, it did not feel that we were part of the university at all. The outer circle had to remind us many times: “Guys, you are still a part of the university, you should remember to ask a few things from the university before you do them.” So, we were kind of elephants in a glass store. [Founder 2]

As was repeatedly emphasized by interviewees, sustaining harmonious connections within multiple levels of the university hierarchy was one of the most important and challenging tasks, and highly decisive in keeping the space alive and flourishing. This element of the boundary work was a bi-directional one, and therefore it involved top-down and bottom-up mutually reinforcing and consensually agreed on decision-making arrangements.

When we started the Game Lab, there was only one person from the top management knowing that this kind of thing was starting, one person from the middle management, and then students and companies. But then comes the hard part – the middle management who are running the schools, the faculties – deans. They are the toughest ones, because they have the responsibility for their own staff, they are protecting their own schools. But we started this way, so this was the bottom-up approach, but still taking care of someone who knows and believes, because from there it can also go top-down. [Founder 2]

Complementing the team of the Oulu Game Lab’s founders with the support of an influential representative of the OUAS management, who acquired adherence and commitment from the senior management and took care of the space’s administrative and bureaucratic issues, was, therefore, crucial. Gaining loyalty and assistance from one of such representatives secured the Oulu Game Lab’s flexibility in its experimental initiatives and nonconformist endeavors.

Of course, you can go to the CEO and request a meeting, but it’s super unlikely to have just random coffee discussions like [K] had with managers and everybody who was in charge, because he knew them already. So, it was fairly easy to … If they had any questions, then they could just ask him, and he would be able to reply. Plus, the level of trust, because if you go to a meeting, and you are telling something that is completely new or something that is in contradiction with your own or with the person’s assumptions, it is super hard for them to acknowledge you. [Manager 2]

Despite being successful in securing support from the core university decision-makers and acquiring substantial freedom in their innovative study approaches, respondents acknowledged that this favorable attitude was not uniformly distributed within the plurality of university structures. This required a certain degree of malleability and creativity in overcoming recurring administrative and operational impasse, even if sometimes these intra-organizational frictions implied assuming additional workload.

We had deals with different supportive structures, and some of them liked us, they created a way to operate with us. The Communications Department hated us, they said: “Go away. We don’t want to see you. You are not supporting our brand; you are not acting as our university should.” We had news releases that we made ourselves, our Communications Department didn’t do it. So, we had to do everything on communications. We had people in our team to handle communications. And there was a structure for that – we had an internship through which our students acted as our communicators. [Founder 2]

Summarizing the scale and scope of boundary work as a component of the institutional work framework applied, it is possible to outline factors that necessitated its commencement. First, boundary work implied advocating for “buy-in” and acceptance of the Oulu Game Lab set-up from the senior management, which relieved the space from significant bureaucratic blockages in terms of funding and general operational performance. Second, boundary work was also concerned with mobilizing resources for conscience-raising communication strategies to cope with situational and task-contingent frictions on the middle management level, where understanding and awareness of the initiative was not unconditionally and uniformly procured.

Distancing work. Cognitive and emotional disentanglement from conventional disciplinary and teacher-led learning methods that were prevalent in higher education was the main goal of the Oulu Game Lab’s distancing work. This implied stepwise design of a novel training configuration and launch of the first intakes.

Course design in spring 2012. As it was already mentioned, employment and business-generation were primary goals set upon the establishment of the Oulu Game Lab. Considering realities of the then-prevailing economic downturn in the city, there was a certain degree of urgency for the experimental space to demonstrate its first tangible results. This urgency was also supported by the demand-side, since most of ex-Nokians, despite general willingness to undertake re-qualification options provided by university degree programs, were mostly disinclined towards long-term commitment to full-time higher education (Laitinen, 2019). The distancing work discussed here considered the relationship between the Oulu Game Lab’s educational offering vis-à-vis the university’s discipline-oriented programs. Further, the industry-focused rather than discipline-focused nature of the prospective study offering, coupled with strained temporal and efficiency demands, made it evident that a traditional teacher-centered pedagogical mode, resembling a customary university setting, would not be the most productive one.

The game industry is a little bit different from many others because people don’t really appreciate formal education very much. They value more experience and skills – what people actually can do. And there are many jobs in the industry in which there is no education at all. [Manager 1]

As noted by interviewees, the process of integrating university teachers into the Oulu Game Lab’s educational set-up, which implied distancing from their entrenched instructional techniques, was at times challenging and demanded additional supportive mechanisms, i.e., introductory sessions, teacher training and time for heuristic adaptation.

The challenge they faced was a different way of pedagogy. We call that impromptu teaching. We turned the teaching into coaching because students have the biggest priority here. They own the premises, and the teacher’s job is just to encourage them, enable their learning. You are a kind of consultant for the student projects. You have to know the projects’ needs and adjust your subject, adjust your message and adjust your behavior according to the needs. You either like this or not. We were totally ok if teacher said: “This is not ok. I don’t want to do it.”

We trained something like 35 teachers. And out of those maybe three or four noticed that it wasn’t for them. This kind of model is one in which the students are in the driver’s seat, and you as a teacher are in the backseat. [Founder 2]

Distancing work with students was predominantly concerned with cognitive and emotional disengagement from standard teacher-led, textbook-focused training approaches that generally still prevailed in Finnish higher education, and especially within entrepreneurially inclined programs and courses (Heikkinen et al., 2016). According to Heikkinen at al. (2016), business opportunities become visible and approachable only when students detach from a familiar classroom environment and plunge into real-life business networks.

Since resources in terms of time and money were scarce, pedagogical methods of the Oulu Game Lab had to be specific, authentic, insightful, useful, unambiguous, and as close to real-life working conditions as possible. These requirements complemented by preliminary pre-study and benchmarking had led to the initial set-up of educational offering in the form of a studio-based, interdisciplinary learning model. Although this educational approach had been more commonplace within art, architecture and design disciplines, with relatively limited empirical evidence of application in entrepreneurship education (Heikkinen et al., 2016), it was still conceptually and strategically well-aligned to the experimental space’s core purposes.

First intakes of students. Oulu University of Applied Sciences, as an institution responsible for the launch and implementation of the novel experimental space, had provided all initial organizational and administrative support for a start and pilot intakes of the Oulu Game Lab. Nested in the Department of Culture as credit-based extra-studies, the Oulu Game Lab got a tool to attract the third and fourth year artistry and business students, joined by a cohort of more technically inclined and more experienced previous Nokia ICT professionals and a number of international and open university students. Since the game industry is a multidisciplinary area, this mix of expertise immersed participants into a real-life game company simulation and equipped them with key competencies necessary for a start-up initiation. Each team had its own coders, audio, video and graphic designers, scriptwriters, marketing professionals and producers.

Even though the Oulu Game Lab positioned itself as a complementary off-campus course, the number of students applied and selected was sufficient to commence studying at a pre-determined time. The first intake started in September 2012, with study spots proportionally allocated between OUAS students, open university applicants and unemployed ICT professionals.

The four-month study period was divided into two interconnected stages: LEAD and LAB sections. The LEAD stage lasted three weeks and provided a prompt dive into the basics of Game and Concept Design, complemented with an introduction to business aspects of the global game industry. LEAD stage was finalized by the first Gate event (GATE1) – teams’ presentations of game concepts – followed by a jury’s assessment of their uniqueness and business model viability. The best concepts were swiftly transferred to a LAB stage, where re-arranged teams commenced work on developing demos of successful game concepts. That final stage carried on for three months and was concluded by the second Gate event (GATE2) – public pitching of teams’ proof-of-concept demonstrations – evaluated by a committee of game industry professionals. Throughout the full-time, semester-long studies, practical, learning-by-doing component of the teams’ work was prioritized. Teams were encouraged to be self-directed and self-organizing. Lectures on any theoretical topics were arranged on demand, coaches and mentors composed of industry experts were initiating mainly impromptu teaching that addressed specific issues of project teams.

We had a kind of iterative approach that whatever doesn’t work, next time we will do it differently. But the whole GATE structure, the building of teams, the fact that we also focused on marketing and the business aspect, not just development skills and that we bring multidisciplinary model – all that was there. I think that the big picture was really established during that six-month design period. [Founder 2]

Along with a pre-established pedagogical configuration that was conceptually detached from traditional modes of entrepreneurial studies, the Oulu Game Lab’s distancing work was also visible in terms of overall educational culture that surrounded the students’ learning community. Since each team operated as an independent “company” with a substantial degree of freedom, high emotional engagement with their work was determined not so much by formal indicators of a course completion, as by recognition of a possible real-life application and usefulness of their ideas in form of start-ups, employment offers and investment opportunities. A competitive spirit between teams, dedication and strong emotional attachment to the projects also indicated that many of the students considered the Oulu Game Lab to be the starting point of their career paths and a desirable dimension for their further professional development.

They start to understand and grow their professional identity more and more. You have to learn how to compromise, how to make [games] faster, and you have to start showing your work before it’s ready. It’s really painful, but you have to learn. Killing your project – it’s the worst thing you can do, that was horrible for them. They were really suffering couple of days after killing the project, but we said that before, it did not come as a surprise. We kept on repeating that you will grow as a professional with this process. I was totally afraid, almost horrified to introduce this concept, the first time. We were really afraid that this might ruin motivation. But over the years it was still a good decision for the labs. [Founder 2]

Anchoring work. Anchoring work in the context of the Oulu Game Lab refers to deliberate efforts to promote endorsement and facilitation of the university-based experimental space’s alternative model on a broader institutional level.

Expansion of the Oulu Game Lab. From the outset of having the experimental space, it was agreed that the outcomes of the three pilot versions of the Oulu Game Lab would determine its ongoing existence. Since the space started to generate start-ups, study credits and positive feedback from students and game companies, the university management decided to prolong its functioning. The twofold mission of the Oulu Game Lab – i.e., re-skilling of unemployed ICT professionals and business initiation support – retained its utility for the prolonged period. However, since surging unemployment rates caused by the Nokia collapse were gradually declining, the space’s pedagogical techniques were updated to serve a larger proportion of less experienced OUAS students which now constituted the majority of the Oulu Game Lab’s student population. This implied expanding the study offerings with basic theoretical concepts related to game business.

When Game Lab was established, most of the students were highly educated ICT professionals with ten years’ minimum work experience. We really didn’t need to teach them anything else – a little bit about what games are, a little bit about game business, and that’s it. But after, we didn’t have these ex-professionals anymore, most of the students didn’t have any skills, they hadn’t made any single game ever, so we had to start from the very beginning – what is unity, what is gain, what the game markets are and how games should be made that they actually make money and so on – from the very beginning. [Manager 1]

Moreover, the structure of the course was upgraded by an additional section – Product Path – another semester-long Lab study aimed at game demo improvement and its further release. While Product Path remained a voluntary credit-based additional study, Demo Path became a compulsory course for the students of its host OUAS Department of Culture.

The problem at the University [of Oulu], and also at the OUAS, is that schools are acting as separate units. So, there’s not so much that connects these schools for collaboration. The Rector saw this model as something that would encourage schools to do more collaboration in the area of teaching. And that was a good source of momentum for us. Of course, we had been lobbying, we had been talking internally about this a lot, that this is a good model, it produces results, and teachers are happy, students are happy, companies are happy. So, come on, more of this kind of activities. So, they kind of … ok, let’s give something to these guys. [Founder 2]

Further stabilization and improvement of the Oulu Game Lab’s learning approach had continued throughout years 2014–2017. Proven to be efficient in enhancing employment prospects and business incubation capabilities, pedagogical methods applied in the Oulu Game Lab were tested in other local industry areas that demonstrated entrepreneurial potential and acute employment needs. Unified under the brand OUAS LAB s, pilot training programs were launched to explore business opportunities in such areas like educational technology, health and social care, tourism, energy and environment (Karjalainen et al., 2016).

There were all kinds of trials. We tried once – and then cancelled. We didn’t find who would be willing to finance [them], there was no attachment to surrounding industries that would continue their existence. We were open for this kind of pilots, we wanted to see if it’s viable or not. And some of these things flew and went forward, but some didn’t. [Founder 2]

Overall, during 2012–2016, educational activities of the OUAS LAB s had resulted in over 600 new trained professionals (and over 15,000 ECTS credits), 152 new concepts, 59 prototype demonstrations and 14 start-up enterprises (Stevenson et al., 2017). In 2014, the Oulu Game Lab became “The best work- and business life development and renewal project in Finland”, as noted at the Rectors’ Conference of Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences. In 2017, Oulu Game Lab won “Award for Excellence in Entrepreneurship Teaching and Pedagogical Innovation” from the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers and became the second-best “Innovative Youth Incubator” at the International Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. In 2018, OUAS LAB s training model was selected as a top “Business Incubator Managed by a University” at the World Incubation Summit.

Apart from organizational and administrative support which the University provided to nurture a new educational offering, the most important, from the words of one of the Oulu Game Lab’s founders, was considerable freedom and minimal intrusion into a teaching and learning process.

Key element I think was that the University loved our curriculum, asked us to be as varied as possible. They said, don’t put anything specific into the curriculum, because the game industry changes and if you need to change something, you might have to teach something totally obsolete, just because it’s included in the curriculum. And it was probably the best instruction, because changing the curriculum is a huge task. So, being as varied as possible was definitely the best thing. [Founder 1]

Acknowledgement and export of the Oulu Game Lab learning configuration. Eventually, the LAB studio model concept was crystallized and anchored in the academic community as “a higher education, interdisciplinary education model aimed at training competent new professionals, self-directed teams and new businesses with an industry focus” (Heikkinen et al., 2015: 53). Further, “the LAB title is used to highlight how this approach reflects a laboratory environment within which experimentation takes place and concepts are built” (Heikkinen and Stevenson, 2016: 7). In contrast to traditional studio models, the experimental space initiated at OUAS was based on several distinctive features, which emanated from its close alignment with the field of business and entrepreneurship. These features included: competitive study environment; integration of industry professionals as coaches; work on authentic, industry-specific company briefs; and interdisciplinary, intergenerational, international project teams (Heikkinen and Stevenson, 2016). Moreover, as was demonstrated by Heikkinen et al. (2016), the LAB studio model supplied students with more expansive professional and social networks, which advanced their entrepreneurial thinking and stimulated business-creation incentives.

The regional success of OUAS LAB s had eventually attracted interest from the global university community. This interest induced international expansion of the LAB studio model and its wider acknowledgement as a truly innovative educational product, especially in the framework of entrepreneurially focused university programs. The LAB studio model was exported to 11 countries and 13 higher education institutions – in Belgium, the Netherlands, Japan, Romania, the United Arab Emirates, Nepal and to a range of domestic universities in Finland.

If you get this model inside the university and inside the whole system, then slowly the whole system is going to start changing slightly. Like we’ve seen inside OUAS. Now teachers are beginning to understand the power of students working together on projects, they are collaborating between departments. They are doing that because they think that this is beneficial. I attribute this to the labs, because they had a good example of how it could be done: “It works, so let’s try it ourselves.” So, basically influencing the whole ecosystem from inside. [Manager 2]

At this stage, it can be concluded that a successive operational combination of boundary work, distancing work and anchoring work, which were accomplished to design, develop and integrate educational offerings of the experimental space into a broader higher education context produced an institutional innovation that materialized in a form of a novel learning configuration – the LAB studio model.

6 Conclusion

This article uncovered the empirical dynamics of institutional innovation in higher education that emerged within the boundaries of the university-based experimental space – the Oulu Game Lab. As an example of change-promoting initiatives that were deliberately designed to adapt higher education sector to ever-expanding external challenges, the case of the Oulu Game Lab enriches the system-wide evidence base of institutional innovation (Brennan et al., 2014; Hasanefendic et al., 2017; Ma and Cai, 2021), with an innovative, project-based and interdisciplinary learning configuration from the Finnish higher education context.

The Triple Helix spaces framework (Etzkowitz and Ranga, 2010) extended with institutional work analysis (Cartel et al., 2019) was applied to ascertain the Oulu Game Lab’s developmental path: from reproduction of socio-economic preconditions and the institutional arrangements of the space’s initiation to its stepwise progression towards the point at which institutional innovation was facilitated. Applying the process model of institutional work, initially elaborated by Cartel et al. (2019), this article extends the application power of the initial framework to instances of institutional innovation in experimental spaces within the field of higher education. Additionally, more detailed investigation of micro-processes that instigated institutional innovation inside the exemplified innovation space imbues the Triple Helix spaces framework with an empirical adaptation that transcends the moment of the space’s initiation.

Institutional innovation in a university system, which is more frequently pressured towards the third mission accomplishment (Adesola and Datta, 2020; Compagnucci and Spigarelli, 2020; Miller et al., 2021), may provoke unbalancing consequences for its reputation, authority, and public trust. Therefore, construction of university-based experimental spaces may serve as an exploratory, reflective tool for testing incoming endeavors, suppressing immediate economic threats, and satisfying acute community demands. Establishment of the Oulu Game Lab as a university-based experimental space at the university’s developmental periphery (Clark, 1998, 2003, 2004) enriched the higher education institution with tighter business links and more efficient pedagogical tools. Moreover, establishment of the experimental space provided an opportunity for a cautious, gradual institutional renewal, thus, protecting the university from any radical and financially irrevocable institutionalization decisions. Unpacking the internal processes which underpinned the Oulu Game Lab’s inception and evolution, this study shed light on institutional effects the university-based experimental space had on the organization it was embedded within, both in terms of pedagogical methods, and in overall advancement of the university’s entrepreneurial status.

Transition to knowledge-based societies is increasingly producing demand for innovative ideas and solutions, as well as innovative means for attaining them. As the main public producers of scientific knowledge repositories, universities have historically been allocated a lead role in this race and are now expected to be equipped for the next entrepreneurial turn without a chance of rolling back to a previous steady state (Etzkowitz, 2014; Feola et al., 2020; Stolze, 2021). Establishment of any collaborative initiatives aimed at taming this knowledge-based transition should also ensure that their central institutional collaborators evolve and transform accordingly, and that they are culturally and operationally ready to provide solid ground for negotiated innovations and experiments to flourish.

7 Implications for Educational Policy

Framing the design of the university-based experimental space as a function of institutional work, this article provides several practical insights for educational policymakers and practitioners. First, the dynamic framework of the three-step institutional work, with its embedded components and processual characteristics highlights essential activities, competencies and networks which may be deemed important for launching and developing educational initiatives that are considered unconventional in particular institutional settings. Second, since contextual factors, such as historical, socio-economic and political trajectories of higher education institutions, play a crucial role in determining the rationale, nature and institutional effects of university-based experimental spaces, pre-evaluation of existing or lacking Triple Helix spaces, with their unique regional features, may be useful in discerning constraining or enabling environmental conditions for establishment of the university-based experimental spaces that are sprouting in different geographical contexts (e.g., Youtie and Shapira, 2008; Tuunainen et al., 2021; Schikowitz et al., forthcoming).

8 Limitations and Future Research

Deliberate focus of the current case study on actors directly involved in initiation and managing of the exemplified university-based experimental space, accounts for only a one-sided interpretation of institutional work as it is subjectively perceived by the members of its internal team. Thus, further research could extend the dimension of institutional influences and account for indirect actors which might potentially exert decision-making power towards experimental spaces involved in institutional innovation. Moreover, generalizability and applicability of the theoretical framework we employed could be strengthened via integration into cross-national higher education institutional contexts in which initiatives with similar attributes are established.

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and insightful comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript. Without their input and feedback this study would not have been complete. We further would like to express our gratitude to Oulu Game Lab team members who agreed to provide research access to their space and share their valuable experience open-mindedly.

Funding

Open access publication of this article was generously supported by the Academy of Finland project (decision number 316545).

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