Sustainable collaborations during the ENGAGE.EU Think Tank at Tilburg University
Tilburg University hosted the first ENGAGE.EU Think Tank, jointly organized with ESADE/Ramon Llull, WU Vienna, and Hanken School of Economics. Focused on Sustainable Collaborations for Sustainability, the Think Tank brought together researchers from the alliance to explore how interorganizational collaborations can address complex sustainability challenges.
Benefits for researchers
The Think Tanks provides researchers with a unique environment for intensive academic exchange, beyond traditional conferences or workshops. Participants share ideas with peers and learn from leading academics, industry professionals, and policymakers. This setting fosters the development of joint research projects, papers, and funding applications, while also inspiring new interdisciplinary ideas. Jörg Raab, academic lead ENGAGE.EU at Tilburg University: “The Think Tank takes researchers out of their usual environment and creates space for new ideas to emerge, helping to develop both individual research profiles and joint European research projects.”
Jörg Raab welcoming the researchers to Tilburg University.
The urgency of collaboration
Jörg highlights the growing urgency of collaboration and how it has changed in recent years, for example through companies wanting to create dependency. “Sustainable collaborations are becoming ever more critical in a complex and turbulent world. While multi-party and cross-sector collaborations are often propagated as an instrument to tackle complex societal problems, they frequently add complexity and success is often elusive. Yet ignoring these problems or relying on simplistic top down interventions are likely to worsen them in the long run. The key question is how to create collaborations between relevant organizations and citizens that are both sustainable and effective in addressing complex sustainability challenges.”
During keynotes from Patrick Kenis, professor Public Governance at Tilburg University, and Sari Kola, Doctor of Science & Technology and researcher at University of Turku/Finland, researchers gained new insights into current research developments.
About this edition
Preparations for this edition started with online meetings to form subgroups around specific topics. These sessions showed that meaningful collaboration takes time, as shared understanding, common interests, and appreciation of diverse disciplinary backgrounds develop gradually. As Jörg explains: “Meaningful collaboration does not emerge instantly. It requires time to get to know one another and to understand different perspectives. The duration of the event was therefore not just logistical, but essential for allowing ideas and relationships to mature.” The Think Tank resulted in four diverse paper projects, which will be further developed in the coming months, including work on game theoretic approaches to network governance and analyses of the emerging securitization of sustainability.
Researchers worked on inter organizational collaborations, bringing together groups of three or more organizations to explore a broad range of issues from empirical analytical and prescriptive perspectives, spanning global to local levels.
First Think Tank at Tilburg University
This was the first Think Tank edition hosted at Tilburg University and was the first to be jointly organized by scholars from four ENGAGE.EU partners: ESADE/Ramon Llull, WU Vienna, Hanken School of Economics, and Tilburg University. From the outset, the organization brought together diverse disciplinary, national, and career perspectives. By involving ENGAGE.EU partners already in the planning phase, the collaborative spirit was embedded not only in the event itself but also in its design. If you would like to know more about collaboration opportunities within ENGAGE.EU then visit our community platform Community ENGAGE.EU
During a visit to Midpoint Brabant, researchers learned about sustainable regional goals and ambitions and how each organization in a project plays a distinct role within the collaboration.
The importance of the alliance
ENGAGE.EU is an alliance of ten universities from ten European countries, bringing together expertise in business, economics, social sciences, humanities and law. Its ambition is to drive societal transformation by addressing major societal challenges and fostering a European mindset. This mission aligns closely with Tilburg University’s strategy. At a time of global shifts in power and technology, universities play a key role through research, education, and societal outreach, while also innovating their own structures. ENGAGE.EU provides the opportunity to support Tilburg University in this process by enabling collaboration with leading European institutions and by strengthening its role as a regional knowledge hub that connects European ecosystems, including Brabant, to enhance learning and competitiveness.