Unicanvas: Exploring a tool for strategic management

TL;DR

This paper introduces Unicanvas, a modified version of the Business Model Canvas, designed to help universities manage strategic challenges like innovation and sustainability.

Contribution

The paper proposes a new strategic management tool, Unicanvas, tailored for universities with 10 building blocks instead of the traditional nine.

Findings

Unicanvas addresses challenges like digitalization, sustainability, and internationalization in higher education.

The tool is participative, dynamic, and flexible, offering a better alternative to traditional static strategic planning models.

It supports universities in aligning with societal demands and enhancing their strategic management practices.

Abstract

This research proposes an adapted version of Business Model Canvas (BMC) as a strategic instrument for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). University-Model Canvas (Unicanvas) is intended to be a critical visual and dynamic tool for addressing the challenges faced by entrepreneurial universities in their quintuple helix model.

Considering the new challenges facing HEIs, transfer knowledge, corporate social responsibility, internationalization, digitalization, sustainability, and the critical role of universities in innovation and regional development, we adapt the strategic building blocks of the BMC in the context of universities.

Departing from BMC, we propose 10 strategic building blocks against the nine BMCs, including an achievement box. The new challenges HEIs face, the expansion of university outputs, and new societal demands highlight the opportunity to use this tool instead of traditional and static strategic planning models to discuss and concretise their differentiated way of competing. The use of this participative, dynamic, intuitive, and flexible strategic tool will facilitate the holistic strategic management of these institutions in their current new challenges.

Universities are responsible for training students, generating knowledge from their research, and transferring it to the market. This triple function is developed in a changing context with significant challenges, such as demographic changes, rapid technological advances, or limited public financing. Changes for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) imply contemplating key issues such as transfer and innovation, internationalization, digitalization, sustainability, or regional development in their strategic objectives. For this reason, many universities are asking themselves: How can they approach the strategic management of universities to face these challenges? Universities have traditionally approached the management of their institutions based on traditional and static strategic planning models. However, universities with more attractive strategic tools from the business and entrepreneurship fields could design strategies to meet the interests of multiple academic and market stakeholders. The original Business Model Canvas (BMC) is a widely accepted tool for business model innovation. It provides an easy, dynamic, intuitive, and flexible vision that can be continually improved to shape and renew any business strategy. The main goal of this research is to propose a modified version of BMC, named University-Model Canvas (Unicanvas). A Unicanvas is proposed for its effectiveness, practicality, and easy-to-use tool design and development of university strategic management. We aim to help university managers and administrators understand the possibilities of this tool for appropriate strategic management in these changing times.

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