This workshop proposes a highly interactive and practice-oriented session that explores how higher education institutions can strengthen trust with society through their engagement in entrepreneurial ecosystems and networks. Responding directly to the EAIR 2026 theme Strengthening trust between higher education and society, it positions ecosystem engagement as a core mechanism through which higher education institutions build reciprocity, legitimacy and long-term public value.

The workshop will be grounded in HEInnovate, a transformation framework developed by the European Commission and the OECD to support higher education institutions in strengthening their innovation and entrepreneurship capacity across eight interrelated dimensions. HEInnovate is explicitly designed as a developmental tool rather than a benchmarking instrument. Its primary value lies in fostering structured dialogue, shared understanding and collective ownership of institutional change. By allowing institutions to assess themselves and to reflect on concrete actions, HEInnovate supports transformation processes that are context-sensitive and internally driven.

The 90-minute workshop will combine a short conceptual framing with highly interactive peer-learning activities. Following an introduction to all HEInnovate dimensions, the session will focus on Entrepreneurial ecosystem and networks. This dimension examines how institutions proactively connect with an array of interlinked actors, including public authorities, businesses, civil society organisations and community initiatives. Effective ecosystem engagement requires shared goals, transparency, continuity of relationships and mutual recognition of value. Conversely, weak or transactional partnerships can erode trust and reinforce perceptions of higher education as detached or instrumental.

Participants will be invited to work directly with the dimension’s statements to reflect on their own institutional context. Each participant will identify one statement that represents a current strength in their institution and one that represents a significant challenge. This contrastive approach will allow participants to move beyond abstract assessment and towards a deeper understanding of why certain collaborations work and why others struggle. After, participants will gather in small groups to unpack the trust-enabling conditions behind their identified strength, such as governance arrangements, leadership commitment, long-standing partnerships or alignment with regional priorities. They will then diagnose the trust gap behind their chosen challenge, exploring whether barriers are primarily relational, structural or cultural.

Building on this analysis, the workshop introduces a simple but powerful dynamic centred on designing a ‘trust bridge’. Participants are guided to consider how existing strengths can be leveraged to address areas of weakness, for example by transferring successful collaboration models, extending trusted relationships to new actors or adapting proven engagement mechanisms to new policy or territorial contexts. Selected HEInnovate Action Cards will be used as prompts to support this process and to help participants translate reflection into feasible institutional actions.

The workshop will create a structured peer-learning environment that enables exchange across institutional types and national contexts while remaining firmly grounded in participants’ lived experience. Its added value lies in allowing participants to experience HEInnovate not only as a diagnostic framework but as a facilitation method they can replicate within their own institutions. Thus, the workshop will contribute to the EAIR Forum by offering a practical pathway for turning trust from an abstract concept into an operational dimension of higher education strategy and practice.