This SLR reveals an evolution in the ecosystem of intermediaries for innovation. Intermediaries for innovation are individuals or organizations whose role it is to span the boundaries between organizations to facilitate innovation [69]. Innovation intermediaries are evolving from a simple partnership model of a technology transfer officer, through to the development of science and technology parks (STPs) and through to living labs and smart cities. This is a non-linear pathway [60], partly due to the rapid change in the nature of the knowledge-based economy—where knowledge is increasingly shared rather than owned [67], partly as a reflection of a change in knowledge production [16] and partly due to an increased focus (particularly in industrial economies) on the importance of the service-based economy, where service (experiential or simply more tailored [46]) is seen as another key to unlock economic development.

On-campus structures includes the creation of several organizational structures within universities to promote the development of partnerships for innovation. These forms of partnership are the simplest and are an organizational response to facilitate the creation of an increasingly entrepreneurial university [60]. In the initial phases at least, this is conducted on campus.

The structures put in place range from technology transfer offices [69], academic liaison officers [56] to act as an intermediary between the university and business, processes to facilitate access to library information for business [52] and the creation of incubators to help start-ups grow into functioning businesses [70]. The purpose of these mechanisms is to assist the transfer of knowledge from the researcher to the consumer via a business.

There is also some evidence in this SLR of the campus itself being used as an innovation, and these were underpinned by a planning perspective [71], asset management [72], by opening up the campus [73] or using the campus to drive radical innovation through institutionalization [74]. These studies show the potential for the entrepreneurial university to drive all three modes (education, research and commercialization) through the operation or development of the campus.

The second significant phase in the development of intermediaries for innovation is the creation of campus-adjacent structures to further the partnership between universities and business. In this SLR, there were 28 case studies looking at STPs. The impetus for the creation of these off-site structures seems to be university, or government driven, but there are examples of it being driven by the private real estate sector [32]. In this SLR, most papers considering STPs focused on a traditional form of STP, where a university creates spaces for businesses to occupy to deliver innovative goods and services (ideally based on or related to the intellectual output of the university).

These campus-adjacent structures have a complex nomenclature, but in this SLR, they are referred to as science and technology parks (STP). This is a generic term to take in research parks, technology parks, innovation parks and business parks. The key definition issue is that they are developed to create an environment conducive to the co-creation of economic value by business, ideally using university created knowledge. They are geographically proximate to the university and tend to focus on the research strengths of the university.

The value of geographical proximity is much debated [75]. This SLR showed strong informal connections between universities and business [52,76,77,78] based on geography but with less evidence of formal connections that deliver innovation based on university-created knowledge [75,79]. One study found that 92% of the on-park research and technology output was through private industry [80], with others considering the role of private capital to innovation success [50], the role of university finance to spin-off success [81] or the role of management [82], or the network benefit [83]. This does not, in itself, mean that STPs represent a failed policy, but that there is not strong evidence for the successful transference of knowledge from creator to consumer via a business based in the university’s STP. The depth of these relationships depends upon the level of service offered by the university to its tenants—with non-core assistance (for example, human resource management functions) being valued by tenants [77] or the value of social capital to start-up success [49].

There is also a stream of work researching the connection between the university and the STP covering the role of knowledge transfer facilitated by librarians [56], the influence of the university on the STP [84], the impact of doctoral education [44] or a more holistic consideration of the STP compared to a technology transfer officer or other intermediaries (see Section 4.1.3) [69].

Although the usefulness of STPs is still subject to debate, the creation of STPs has been adopted in Europe [7,9,41,70,79,80,85,86,87,88] and North America [1], and STPs are widely emulated in the former Eastern bloc countries [11,89,90], as well as the centralized economies of China [2,55,91], Taiwan [92,93], Malaysia [53] and others in Asia; the creation of STPs is also seen as a pathway for economic development in developing nations [8,94,95,96] as well as being subject to international comparisons [4,34,38,47].

The next phase in the evolution of intermediaries for innovation is the creation of living labs. These are partnership structures that are focused on user engagement and open innovation. The partners are varied but generally involve university, business, and government (at some level). Living labs (and derivatives) are driven by a desire to innovate within the partnership and this might be the deepening of research findings [97], creating a product or service to commercialize the research [98] or co-creating a new product or service [99].

The external change that is facilitating the development of living labs is the ability for a range of stakeholders to become freely involved in the process of innovation [100]. The service-dominant logic [48], open innovation [101], user innovation [29], user-centered design [102] or even social (rather than economic) innovation [103] have become possible due to the ability to create communities of interest for almost anyone.

Living labs (and derivatives) are widely debated in the literature and are normally considered a network that incorporates both user engagement and open innovation [35]; they have the characteristics as set out in Table 15. There are several forms of living labs, which are also evolving. Sustainability labs [104] are focused on the delivery of economic, social and environmental outcomes at a geographic location. Smart cities are developed as a higher systems level solution under which living labs enable the demonstration and prototyping of products and services. Urban living labs are a network structure within an urban environment [64].

However, both the literature and practitioners struggle to define living labs and their derivatives [29,64], or to create business cases to build them [65,104], or even best practice guides to help manage them [31]. They are a rapidly evolving creation that, in many respects, is a direct expression of the partnership that created them [104]. That said, there are structures to suit different desired outcomes, such as wicked issues [105] or radical innovation [74], and they are grouped into a genus containing 4 typologies characterized by open innovation: utilizer driven, enabler driven, provider driven, and user driven [35].

At the heart of living labs are two key elements: user engagement and open innovation [35]. These two aspects are evident in the case studies in this SLR. It is these two aspects that stand them apart as intermediaries for innovation. Because of this commitment—facilitated by the knowledge economy and technological developments—living labs are footloose. They can be on campus [59,71,73,106,107,108,109], off campus [9], in an STP [48], on a high street [110], local [65,90,97,111,112], precinct scale [113], urban [100,114,115,116,117,118], suburban [40,66], rural [15], regional [101,105], peripheral [119] or city scale [68,99,102,116,120,121,122,123]. They can also be virtual [124].

It is partly this footloose, open and creative element that means that they are potentially difficult to harness at scale: indeed, difficult to harness by policy makers, but also difficult to harness by businesses, universities and the public. These structures are innovative in themselves; each is unique (even with common elements) and each is designed to serve a purpose. Their amorphous shape and shifting nature make them difficult to grasp and initiate at scale. Whilst STPs could be created by policy diktat [76], living labs cannot and as such are more ephemeral and can be a conundrum to universities, business and government. This transformational change of the modus operandii means that a once linear, or apparently linear evolution [60], is now beset by new branches and new forms (such as sustainability labs, urban living labs, and smart cities). These branches and forms are being created at such a pace that the literature is struggling to define them [64], or adequately develop theories to help amortize their existence [125].

In this SLR, living labs (and derivatives) are the partnership structure that is being used successfully to drive social and economic development [62,126]. It is also the structure that is used in the limited number of studies that are using innovation to drive the delivery of sustainable development [19,29,40,73,96,107,109,115,127,128,129,130,131,132], with the emphasis on both sustainability labs and urban living labs. The literature does not provide guidance for the reasons for this. In a time when the Sustainable Development Goals have been unanimously agreed by the United Nations, it is noteworthy that the literature around developing partnerships for innovation is largely silent on the implications for innovation (an issue also noted by others [29]).

2.2. Attributional Data