Innovation often thrives at the intersection of diverse ideas and collaborative efforts. This philosophy drives the project titled “Pathways to Innovation and Entrepreneurship,” I have designed
and coordinated with Cornell Tech thanks to the funding of the US Mission to Italy over the past year. The initiative aims to connect researchers and entrepreneurs across inland areas of Italy and
the New York ecosystem, addressing challenges faced by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in tech and social innovation. In this blog post, I explore the implications of evaluating the
project’s results and outline the importance of a global sustainability approach to evaluation for continuous improvement and impact.

The project promoted a series of workshops designed to foster university-industry collaborations to enhance research and innovation (R&I), and regional development. Drawing on comparative
research on university innovation policies, partially published in the special issue on “Assessing University’s Societal Impact” for the journal Evaluation and Program Planning, the initiative aimed
to bridge local entrepreneurial ecosystems with advanced international socioeconomic realities.

The initiative adopted a distinctive g-local approach — referring to the interconnection between the global and the local (Jean-Francois, 2020). Firstly, the training targeted multiple groups and
stakeholders. Since January 2024, a talented cohort of five PhD candidates in industrial engineering and chemistry, two startup founders, and two graduate students in social innovation began to
exchange ideas with entrepreneurs and executive leaders in Italy and the US. Over the past seven months, this emerging group of researchers has engaged with over sixty entrepreneurs and industry
representatives from such sectors, as aerospace, electronics, agri-food, and art-culture-tourism. They also interacted with international experts during four thematic workshops organized in Italy
and a summer school held in late June at the Italian Academic Center in New York, based on the Cornell Tech campus.

The project dealt with locally and globally relevant themes. The workshops, held in Southern Italy, aimed at understanding entrepreneurs’ needs and bringing innovation to SMEs facing slow
productivity growth, a shortage of hi-tech workers, brain drain, and other socioeconomic challenges such as depopulation and the adverse effects of climate change. These issues were locally rooted but
also linked to global trends, providing insights related to global sustainability challenges that were addressed through promoting local participation and real empowerment of all participants on the
ground. The training culminated in the summer school, “Bridging the Atlantic.” Besides researchers, managers, consultants, and other entrepreneurs based in the vibrant New York metropolitan area delved into the challenges of tech entrepreneurship, social innovation, and the assessment of high-potential investments for societal impact and sustainability transitions.

Building upon Hirschman’s ‘art of trespassing,’ the learning approach was trans-disciplinary (Gürkan, 2021). The pedagogy drew on the questions raised by local actors to create networks that
overcome the isolation of inland communities and foster innovation. Issues addressed included a lack of innovation culture constraining productivity growth, the digital transformation of SMEs, a
critical shortage of hi-tech workers, brain drain, depopulation of inland areas, and the effects of climate change on agri-food production. Across territories and issues, participants engaged in
discussions and project group work — such as promoting villages of denomination wines. This project, stemming from a workshop held in Irpinia, where wine producers sought tech and social
innovation to tackle depopulation and climate change, became a central activity during summer school in New York. This project focused on identifying tech solutions like drones, AI, and hydrogel for irrigation while promoting cultural tourism and technical education at the high school level.

Finally, through a comparative analysis, several cases of university-industry collaborations (UICs), both in Italy and internationally, were presented during the workshops, showing both unique and
commonly shared challenges. UICs demonstrated the benefits of the space economy, enhanced organizational performance through AI and ICT tools, new agri-tech solutions, and the valorization
of cultural heritage through innovative startups. These partnerships showcased how leveraging underutilized natural, productive, and cultural resources can attract new residents and visitors,
fueling local economies.

As for the outcomes, quantifiable results including the number of participants are far less relevant than the learning achievements and the mindset transformation among researchers increasingly
sensitive to research design addressing societal and ethical issues. While creating connections between actors, symbols, realities, and authentic experiences, both participants and instructors
interacted to learn, take risks and high-level thinking, cooperate in group work, developing various self-oriented and social skills. Both participants and instructors engaged in a reflexive exercise to
gain awareness and mature an understanding of the progress in acquiring new knowledge and skills and what remained to be learned in future initiatives. And, the summer school amplified this jolt,
featuring renowned academics, visionary executive leaders, and prominent international, and influential figures in the New York ecosystem that provided an enlightening and place-based
perspective on translating research findings into market-ready solutions for social impact assessment. Yet, several challenges emerged in how to overcome distrust between entrepreneurs and
academics, in exploring knowledge in a pre-competitive environment while addressing the pressure for research commercialization. It is still an issue of how the project will sustain the connections
and collaborations established between researchers and entrepreneurs in the long term.

Evaluation Implications and Future Directions

Reflecting on the achievements and experiences of this initiative, it is clear that the journey of Pathways to Innovation and Entrepreneurship has only just begun. The connections made, the
knowledge shared, and the innovative solutions developed during this project require a glocal sustainability evaluation approach covering a wide range of areas, from local community benefits
and educational outcomes to broader impacts on academic-industry collaboration and entrepreneurial ecosystem development.

While reconstructing the learning outcomes and the application of knowledge to research, and workplaces may be the first steps of the training assessment, a global sustainability approach to
evaluation, referring to how resources are being exploited globally (Jean-Francois, 2020), turns out more relevant to design a longer-term impact evaluation.

Accordingly, evaluation should address cross-societal stakeholdermess, accounting for the multi level actor groups influencing the intervention and its impact. Participants and instructors engaged
in activities fostering learning, risk-taking, high-level thinking, and cooperation. The summer school involved them in immersive knowledge exchange and interaction. Thus, for instance, the
summer school’s long-term impact on participants should be traced through their subsequent engagement in innovation and entrepreneurial activities, the development of new projects or
startups, and the application of knowledge gained to local challenges. Tracking their career trajectories, and involvement in future collaborative innovation projects may illuminate the
transformative learning of this trans-disciplinary experience.

Secondly, the evaluation should investigate glocal innovation trajectories of UICs, including the knowledge spillover effects in proximity and global contexts. The focus should also center on how
local communities enhance their innovation culture escaping from isolation, depopulation, and climate change adverse effects. The workshops aimed to promote innovation in regions with
traditional manufacturing and agrifood industries. Evaluating this impact should focus on local productivity, digitization of SMEs, and community engagement in innovative practices. Key issues
include assessing the retention of hi-tech workers, tracking employment patterns, and focusing on local graduates and startups launched by participants. Long-term assessments could also track
demographic changes and improvements, specifically in agrifood production resilience to climate change. Network creation, new business ventures, and knowledge/resource flows across inland
areas should also be assessed.

Finally, embracing a developmental approach à la Patton, evaluation should engage in elaborating a cross-societal theory of change, identifying governance structures and network-building dynamics
that can generate transformative change and global sustainability (Jean-Francois, 2020; Dedeurwaerdere, 2024). A systemic evaluation design can orient future directions for g-local nontraditional training. This exercise could enhance the understanding of interdependencies that tie actors at different scales, thus informing prospective training offerings and helping scale up the intervention to include new cohorts of researchers and groups of entrepreneurs.

References
Dedeurwaerdere, T. (2024) Transdisciplinary Research, Sustainability, and Social Transformation, Governance and Knowledge Co-Production, Routledge, London and New York.

Gürkan, B. (2021) Transdisciplinary Integrated Curriculum: An Analysis of Teacher Experiences through a Design Model within the Framework of IB-PYP, Participatory Educational Research (PER) http://dx.doi.org/10.17275/per.21.10.8.1

Jean-Francois E. (2020) Quadrangulational comparino for global sustainability studies, Journal of Global Research in Education and Social Science, 14(1), 33–41.