The Platform University Whitepaper

Watch the Deep Dive webinar:

The Platform University Whitepaper

In the face of unprecedented challenges and the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity of today’s world, universities must rethink how they engage, create value, and operate.

The Platform University, a collaboration between RMIT FORWARD in Australia and Boundaryless in Europe, offers a transformation agenda rooted in global expertise and industry-proven practices. Leveraging Platform Organisation models and the Ecosystem-Enabling Entrepreneurial Organization (3EO) framework, we empower universities to become dynamic, flexible hubs of entrepreneurial innovation. This transformation reimagines the university’s structure, culture and operations, to enable continuous innovation, agile responsiveness to market shifts and the seamless integration of internal and external resources.

Authored by Pete Cohen and Peter Thomas from RMIT FORWARD and Simone Cicero from Boundaryless, our foundational whitepaper ‘The Platform University’ presents a transformative vision for universities, grounded in Platform Organisation models that enable entrepreneurial ecosystem capabilities.

This paper looks at the pressing challenges universities face today – financial instability, escalating competition, evolving student expectations, difficulties adapting to market demands, and emerging geopolitical pressures.

The solution we propose to these challenges is a shift towards an entrepreneurial culture that drives innovation, fosters ecosystem-wide collaboration and builds flexible, market-responsive structures—equipping universities to thrive in an increasingly complex world.

To download the Whitepaper and be timely informed about new dates for the upcoming Webinars as soon as they get published, please submit your request using the form on the right.