A legitimacy approach to social innovation initiatives at universities.

This article focuses on the legitimacy challenges and processes involved in integrating social innovation within the third mission of research-intensive universities, using Lund University (LU) in Sweden as a case study. It examines three social innovation initiatives—Housing First (addressing homelessness), SoPact (a social entrepreneurship accelerator), and Climate-KIC (an EU climate change project)—to analyze how these projects gained internal legitimacy within the university and external legitimacy from societal stakeholders. The study finds that social innovation struggles to achieve legitimacy comparable to traditional technology transfer activities due to differing academic norms, resource constraints, and the need for alignment between university administration, faculties, and external partners. The authors propose a legitimacy framework emphasizing the importance of both internal (university-wide and faculty-level) and external (municipal, governmental, civil society) support for social innovation to thrive in academic settings, highlighting the necessity of institutional change and leadership to embed social innovation alongside research and teaching missions.