Two Great Challenges in the Era of Rapid Change

Upon entering the twenty-first century, knowledge creation and technological innovation are advancing at a tremendous pace, and the speed of social transformation and the directions development takes are outpacing our imagination. Although our material conditions are improving and cultural life becomes ever richer, the problems caused by the excessive exploitation of natural resources as well as estrangement and cultural conflicts lie across the road for sustainable development, directly affecting humankind’s development and future survival.

The first challenge lies in the conflict between the provisions of nature and the excessive exploitation by humankind, the escalating human pressure on the environment. ³ Planet earth can no longer bear humankind’s excessive exploitation and waste. Crises such as energy exhaustion, environmental pollution, and climate deterioration, are all directly threatening humankind’s survival. Solving these problems depends on technological innovation. For instance, China is applying hybrid rice technology to solve its food crisis.Reference Long-ping ⁴ Many countries are turning to shale gas, solar energy and LED technologies to ease the energy problems, and are using drip irrigation and sea water desalination technologies to relieve the tension of water resources. However, new technology is not a master key, it may even create new problems. Only when technologies are used in harmony with the environment will innovation be truly beneficial. For example, the harnessing of Erhai Lake is a successful example of incorporating water treatment technology with a circular economy.Reference Shang, Wang, Zhang, Chen, Chen and Kong ⁵ For the advance of human civilization, nature is not only the provider of resources but also a sanctuary. Interaction between nature and new technology should be positive. Fundamental scientific, technical, and industrial know-how to solve the carbon and climate problem for the next half-century is already on the way.Reference Pacala and Socolow ⁶ But the search for new ideas and technologies that help solve the substantial problems that humankind encounters has to be endless.

The second challenge lies in the conflicts between different civilizations. Human civilizations have evolved over thousands of years. People in different regions have developed into groups with their own history, cultural heritage, political institutions and religion. Diverse cultures or civilizations have formed the current world, mixing different economic systems, levels of development, or even political systems.Reference Huntington ⁷ With accelerated human mobility and the process of economic globalization, social life styles have been changed and conformity is no longer the norm; even in the same community we now find diverse groups of people, and even in the same group there exist subcultures. The revolution in information and transportation technologies has further promoted the degree and frequency of interactions among civilizations. The emergence of ISIS forces us to reflect on the relationships between individuals, ethnic groups and cultures. Culture and identity can trigger friction and conflict between people from different cultures, but they can also help people to reflect on their own culture, and shed light on the creation of a new common culture. China’s strategy of ‘peaceful rise’,Reference Bijian ⁸ and the ‘One Belt One Road’ initiative,Reference Swaine ⁹ are efforts in searching for a way to promote the harmonious coexistence of civilizations and the common prosperity of diverse cultures.

Transformation into Innovative Universities in the Face of the Two Challenges

To meet the challenge from nature, research universities should engage in broadening humankind’s vision in developing a harmonious relationship with nature. To meet the challenge from cultural conflicts, universities should advocate close interconnections, communication, and mutual understanding, and cultivate global citizens with a global consciousness. Research universities should transform themselves into innovative universities.

From their birth, research universities have been at the front of the creation of scientific knowledge and the dissemination of the humanities.Reference Geiger ¹⁰ They are humankind’s knowledge bank and think tank. Research universities have attracted and harboured most of the brightest minds and learned intellectuals on this planet, and have cultivated the top notch talents in various fields around the world. Since the new challenging era has imposed new and higher demands and expectations on research universities, a crisis will arise if these universities fail in their function of incubating innovation to fulfil the requirements of societal development. When this happens, their irreplaceable position will be diminished, and their leading position will be phased out.

Today, numerous high-tech companies and government agencies have already started to play major roles of applied innovation. Some of them have made large profits from various products that dominate people’s lifestyle in every corner. With the huge financial returns, commercial investment from venture capital, and flexible operation modes, their research and development strengths are growing surprisingly fast, even setting foot in fundamental research areas. In other words, they are ‘on top of tides’,Reference Wu ¹¹ striving to launch the next generation science and technology revolution. However, on the eve of ‘the fourth industrial revolution’, with its fusion of technologies across the physical digital and biological worlds,Reference Schwab ¹² traditional universities may be constrained by conservative behaviours, and the originality of the scientists and the risky projects they come up with may well be hindered by overloaded career pressure and negative incentives from funding agenciesReference Foster, Rzhetsky and Evans ¹³ .

In our rapidly changing era, university leaders need to think more deeply than at any time before in history: how can research universities sustain their vitality, and continue to lead societal development? One of the most desirable and feasible roads to take for research universities is to transform themselves into innovative universities. The concept of innovative university we proposed reaches beyond the perspective of a single innovator with a vibrant vitality for innovation and the capacity of consolidating resources (somewhat like an ‘entrepreneurial university’Reference Clark ¹⁴ ). It refers to a university that not only shows innovation capacity, but that also functions as an organizer, connector and coordinator of various innovative components of the society.

Innovative Universities to Engage in Adding Value and Achieving Excellence

The rapid development of the world needs innovative universities with a strong sense of historical mission and the consciousness to rethink their value orientation.

Based on traditional functions and responsibilities, innovative universities should engage in adding value through innovation. They should not only have the capacity to compete for resources, they should, more importantly, have the capacity to consolidate high quality resources and to effectively give full play to add value and achieve excellence through innovation.

On the one hand, research universities should continue their focus on discovering the secrets of nature, and enlarging our understanding of nature: to give just a few examples, to capture the pattern of plant growing and to find new methods to accelerate photosynthesis, so as to open new paths to solve the food problem; to challenge intractable diseases and develop more accurate therapeutic tools, so as to improve quality of life; to explore a systematic solution for ecological crises, so as to preserve the resources and ecology that humankind relies on. On the other hand, research universities need to do more research on conflict resolution among different cultures, regimes, races, beliefs, so as to build a more harmoniously coexistent human civilization. The purpose for which we persistently and unremittingly challenge difficult problems is to promote the progress of knowledge, the progress of society, and the progress of human beings. It is through adding value by innovation that innovative universities stand out among organizations with increasing visibility and public recognition. The future position of an innovative university will depend on how much value it can add through innovation.

Innovative universities should engage more in creating excellence. From the perspective of adding value, innovative universities will keep upgrading themselves and make efforts to build four innovative systems of excellence. First, an excellent system of cultivating talents: facilitate excellent students to grow into leaders, and young scientists and scholars to become influential academic masters. Second, an excellent system of scientific innovation: turn ideas into academic productions with extensive influence, and turn imagination into technological breakthroughs with practical value. Third, an excellent system of service: transfer cutting edge research into advanced productivity, transform rich academic resources into a vibrant fountainhead of innovation. Fourth, an excellent system of inheriting and passing on cultural heritage: make extensive academic exchanges and interactions an effective way of inheriting and passing on cultural heritage, and distil successful experiences into globally recognized developmental models.

All this means that many traditional universities should prepare themselves for essential systematic transformations when it comes to ideals and actions in governance, organization, management and institutional policies,Reference Coaldrake and Stedman ¹⁵ so as to provide the best teaching and learning experiences, produce forward-looking research, and make unique contributions to the local community, regional and global economy,Reference Sampat and Mowery ¹⁶ human wellbeing, and world peace. Both the world-class university movement in Asia and the entrepreneurial university movement in North America and Western Europe are responding to the call for institutional transformation towards innovative universities.

Innovative Universities to Build a Global Innovation Network

How can a research university be transformed into an innovative university? Apart from building its core innovation capacities, it should connect with innovators worldwide, and build a global innovation network with a strong capacity of consolidating various resources for innovation.

Just as no single firm has all the necessary skills to stay on top of all areas of progress and bring significant innovations to market in fields where scientific or technological progress is developing rapidly,Reference Powell and Grodal ¹⁷ the capacity of acquiring or consolidating high quality resources cannot be achieved by an individual university or universities in a single region. Thus, an innovative university should optimize and upgrade itself, develop the capability of acquiring and consolidating high quality resources to strengthen its competitiveness through openness, sharing and collaboration. This means that research universities need to look at the future from a new perspective: future innovation should be made through networks. Only those who have access to the key nodes of the network can ascend to the central positions in the global innovation system. Therefore, an innovative university must play an irreplaceable role in the formation and function of such an innovation network to sustain its position in the global innovation system; this goes especially for the ambitious leading universities.

Society needs research universities to construct a more effective innovation system by networking and consolidating innovation institutions across continents to solve global problems together. Thus, an innovative university should not only play a part in the triple helix (university-industry-government relations),Reference Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff ¹⁸ it should be the node of the innovation network to connect industry, government and non-government organizations, and function as the place of intersection of the brightest young people and all the best politicians, scientists and engineers, artists and humanists for education and research.

Only the research universities have the capacity to coordinate divergent interest groups of innovators, and to work together towards humankind’s common goal. Freedom and inclusiveness are unique characteristics, part of the ‘genes’ of a university. Inclusiveness makes a university possess the courage to challenge the old ways, and diversity enables a university to continue innovating. In this way, an open and win-for-all innovation network will be built, to encourage a plural culture, to hold diverse opinions, as well as to bring together diverse individuals with their independent, brilliant and critical ideas. There, in innovative universities, they stay together in harmony but not sameness, learning from each other and solving problems through debates, exploration and collaboration.

Within the group of research universities, the call is for a more open attitude to understand each other and a more pragmatic and closer partnership. The advanced research universities must be more open to share their experiences, actively forging a transparent and sustainable academic community. The newly emerging research universities must work hard to avoid epigonism and institutional inertia, actively carry out reforms for a modern university system, and develop their capacity to work with advanced research universities shoulder to shoulder. In general, the research university community needs to construct honest, close, diverse, pragmatic multilateral cooperation, and extend various forms of collaborations.

In a word, from an innovation network perspective, research universities not only need to strengthen existing collaboration partnerships, but also to actively connect and incorporate other types of innovators into a new global innovation network, which can be described as ‘solving global problems with global wisdom’.

A Historical Moment for Research Universities to Embrace Challenges and Opportunities

Innovative universities foster the educational ideal to innovate and continuously explore the unknown. With insight and vision, they connect with each other for mutual benefit and shoulder the responsibilities cooperatively.

On 10 October 2013, the League of European Research Universities (LERU), the Association of American Universities (AAU), the Group of Eight (Go8) and C9, ¹⁹ signed a joint statement on the characteristics of research-intensive universities, representing their consensus on research universities. ²⁰ It is time now to go further by reaching a new consensus on building innovative universities and a global innovation network to meet the challenges confronting humankind. How far the innovative community can go depends on the courage and breadth of our heart in sharing resources, complementing each other’s advantages, learning reciprocally and mutually promoting our vision.

The flagship research universities around the world, given the capability of bearing their great responsibilities as innovative universities, should strive for developing a global innovation network and being its key nodes. In return, all the universities will elevate their capacity for research and for cultivating innovative talents to a new realm, thus to make a significant, constant, positive and irreplaceable impact on societies and human life. It is the time to open up the future.