INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL AND THE UNIVERSITY THIRD MISSION: AN EVALUATION FRAMEWORK

The purpose of this work is to understand the new role of universities in the development of the knowledge economy via an intellectual capital perspective. Indeed, from being entities for knowledge creation and dissemination, universities are now asked to play an increasingly entrepreneurial role, involving networking and collaboration, as well as sustainability and social engagement. This consideration is in line with the 4th stage intellectual capital perspective, which focuses on knowledge creation with an ecosystem focus. The work is based on the following steps: first a literature review on the new role of universities and on the Third Mission approach; then, an analysis of the evaluation of Third Mission activities, by including several international ranking systems and research projects; finally, an analysis on the exploitation of IC as an assessment tool. Despite the academic and institutional efforts, there is little agreement on a set of indicators to evaluate quality in Third Missions activities. Several models have been implemented in order to identify IC in universities, but they need further applications and evaluations. Through this methodology, we will try to systematise the theoretical contributions, which are currently fragmented and lack a systemic vision.