Making Innovation Learning Accountable: Intellectual Property Governance and Integrity‐Oriented Judgement in University‐Industry Collaboration

ABSTRACT

University‐industry collaboration has become a central way through which higher education seeks to make innovation learning authentic, applied and professionally relevant. Yet the very authenticity of such collaboration changes the institutional condition of learning. When students participate in externally connected projects, incubators, sponsored work, entrepreneurial programmes or technology‐transfer environments, their learning becomes entangled with ownership claims, disclosure rules, university resources, external interests and commercial possibilities. This article theorises university‐industry collaboration as an integrity‐sensitive educational condition. It argues that intellectual property should not be treated merely as legal literacy or entrepreneurial competence, but as a form of governance through which the accountability conditions of innovation learning are made visible, teachable and contestable. The article develops the concept of integrity‐oriented innovation judgement to describe the capacity students need when knowledge becomes simultaneously educational, collaborative, institutional and potentially commercial. This judgement consists of three interrelated dimensions: boundary judgement, accountability judgement and integrity judgement. The article contributes to higher education research by reframing innovation education as a problem not only of capability formation, but of accountable participation in the governed production of knowledge.