Universities’ emerging roles to co-create sustainable innovation paths: some evidences from the Marche Region

Rural areas are characterised by having a myriad of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) with generally low levels of knowledge, more concerned about day-to-day survival than long-term sustainable development strategies. In order to encourage rural development, multi-stakeholder networks involving Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have been recognized as the best way to use existent resources and stimulate interaction and knowledge exchange. On the other hand, the presence of heterogeneous stakeholder groups marked by distinctive set of values and ideologies make cooperation in rural areas harder. Given these premises, this paper aims at determining what roles universities can assume in multi-stakeholder networks, in order to support materialisation of sustainable development.