Network IQ Alliance is a community of entrepreneurial universities from Spain, Poland, Latvia, Ireland and the UK, an innovative small and medium-sized enterprise (SME), a network of research institutes, an industry network, and a global network of science and technology parks in 77 countries.

The project’s consortium is committed to mainstream network intelligence (nIQ) – a system-change methodology developing digital competencies at the ecosystem level for innovation and networking. The goal is to empower purpose-driven entrepreneurial people to amplify growth opportunities from the networks they build to innovate better, faster and have long-term resilience.

Network IQ Alliance’s 2030 vision, via nIQ, is to create systemic impact in higher education at the institutional level by integrating innovation and entrepreneurship into the core strategies of higher education institutions (HEIs), building leadership capacity to execute them and connecting them better with their city-level ecosystems and globally.

The project calls for harnessing the power of networked communities to scale-up and accelerate the impact of entrepreneurial universities, enabling them to:

• build forward better ecosystems both physical and digital;
• use existing and new networks more effectively;
• direct better capacity building for stakeholder and client success;
• optimise existing networks for better sharing, selling, innovating, partnering and fundraising;
• build self-confidence, responsible leadership and change leaders;
• address the innovation ‘stickiness factor’ for long-term benefit;
• drive real social change at scale in the research and innovation community.

Network IQ Alliance partners aim to accelerate the health, manufacturing, green and digital transformation, and deepen the integration of industrial regions, which are Emerging Innovators with regions that reinvented themselves and became Moderate and Strong Innovators.

Through the Innovation Vision Action Plan, the project aims to execute and act on the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) Strategic Innovation Agenda. Network IQ Alliance is focused on transforming individuals and teams with skills to immediately reach out to their network, procure resources, achieve purpose and objectives for immediate success and long-term impact – all using technology.

During the pilot phase the project will:

• support five innovative SMEs via multidisciplinary research teams;
• train 130 students with nIQ skills for developing innovation, fundraising and global market access, including 15 students mentored;
• train 15 academic staff and mentor 5 in nIQ to embed in their HEI’s innovation/entrepreneurship education;
• train 15 non-academic staff and mentor 5 to embed nIQ in their HEI’s strategy and processes;
• establish two nIQ ‘train the trainer’ centres at HEIs for popularising the methodology;
• form one new collaborative partnership in the knowledge triangle.

The Network IQ Alliance results and outcomes will be successfully translated into real-world impact aligned with the priorities of EIT Manufacturing, EIT Health, ETI Digital and EIT Climate.

Project coordinator

Carmen Adán, Innovation Manager at La Salle Technova Barcelona, Innovation Park of La Salle-URL (contact)