Our planetary environment, the world on which we live, has finite, precious resources. Nature is a key ally that we all benefit from. The Earth’s ecosystems that are held together by a multitude of symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationships are becoming increasingly unstable. The way we live must change for the benefit of all creatures, including ourselves. One way to achieve this is for the world’s universities to strengthen relationships within their ecosystems, locally, regionally, and internationally, to help build a better, more equal world together, with a reduced environmental footprint. 5th generation universities will be more ambitious in setting up deep, transformational collaborations with a wide variety of sectors and organisations that they have not worked with before to achieve better, more sustainable solutions to the world’s biggest challenges. Indeed, we have argued in Chapter 1 that a transformational alliance approach focused on achieving the UN SDGs will be the defining feature of a 5th generation university.

Universities need to develop a comprehensive corporate engagement strategy covering research, teaching, and innovation or KE. They must consider how engagement across diverse sectors of the quadruple helix more generally will contribute to achieving their institutional mission, vision and values. In this chapter, we consider workforce development, student engagement, leadership strategy and how forward-thinking senior leaders can create a different culture that encourages alliances to grow. We also discuss further how 5th generation universities will be transformational: how they will transform their institutions’ culture, talent (increasing diversity and inclusion), leadership, teaching and learning, impact and research.

Before we can consider why universities should engage in multi-sector transformational strategic alliances, at a range of different levels, it is important first to consider: ‘What is the role of a university?’ These are common answers to that question, in our experience:

• • education – to equip people with knowledge, skills and experience;