Everyone agrees universities are essential to public innovation. The harder question, raised during G4I 2026 is whether anyone is willing to pay for it. 

There is a comfortable consensus in GovTech circles that universities matter. They train talent, run the research, and incubate the start-ups that governments increasingly depend on. It is the kind of statement that draws nods in any room. What made the universities panel at the GovTech 4 Impact World Congress worth listening to was that it refused to stop at the nod. 

Moderated by Teresa Riesgo, Spain’s Secretary General for Innovation at the Ministry of Science and Innovation, the session opened from a clear premise: strong innovation ecosystems rarely exist without strong universities at their core. Universities, she argued, do far more than educate. They generate talent, research, infrastructure, the questions society needs to ask, and the applied solutions governments and companies need to find. Her challenge to the panel was pointed. Are universities actually adapted to the challenges of the present, and are they genuinely prepared to work with governments, businesses, and citizens? 

The collaboration that does not come naturally 

Manuel Sierra, Director of the ETSI Telecomunicación at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, was quick to puncture any romanticism. Universities are essential, he agreed, but they cannot act alone, and the collaboration they are praised for does not come naturally. He described a partnership between his university and Madrid City Hall in which researchers and municipal technicians initially struggled, not over technology, but over culture: different professional assumptions, different working rhythms, different definitions of success. What eventually aligned them was a shared public mission: improving outcomes for citizens. The lesson was that university–government partnerships require not just expertise but a shift in mindset on both sides. 

Dirk Heberling, Director of IHF – Institute of High Frequency Technology, brought a German perspective rooted in the experience of RWTH Aachen, a university so embedded in its city that roughly 50,000 students live among a population of around 250,000. That density, he argued, creates a natural pipeline of talent into the city and lets new technologies be tested and adopted earlier than they otherwise would be. Students stay after graduation. Expertise accumulates locally. And universities take on a quieter but vital role: translating technical complexity into language that policymakers and the public can understand – a function that becomes critical when technologies such as telecommunications infrastructure or electromagnetic fields provoke public anxiety.

The uncomfortable question of incentives 

It was Rui Luís Andrade Aguiar, Professor, University of Aveiro; Coordinator, Instituto de Telecomunicações, Portugal, who introduced the discomfort the session needed. Aveiro is far smaller than Aachen, yet it has shaped its local ecosystem through student talent, spin-outs, incubators, and regulatory-light testing environments. But his real contribution was a challenge to the consensus itself. Everyone praises university involvement in public innovation, he noted, while the incentive structures quietly work against it. 

• Are academics who help cities actually rewarded in their careers?  

• Do universities receive meaningful budgetary recognition for that engagement?  

In his view, goodwill alone is not a sustainability strategy. If governments want universities as long-term partners in solving public problems, the academic reward system and institutional funding models have to recognize and support that work. Otherwise, the collaboration depends entirely on individual generosity, which is no foundation at all. Drawing on his own experience as a technical adviser in Portugal, he added a complementary warning: politicians often lack technical depth, while technical experts underestimate the constraints of law, governance, and politics. The answer is not to choose between them, but to build teams that hold both. 

From technology to public value

Ignacio Criado, Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the Autonomous University of Madrid, reframed the discussion around governance. He cast universities as hubs of collaborative governance – places where public institutions, companies, researchers, and citizens can co-create solutions through public innovation labs, mission-oriented approaches, sandboxes, and spin-offs. He pointed to Valencia as an example of a city deploying a sandbox model that brings universities and technology companies together to tackle social problems. 

But his sharpest point came later, when he shifted the focus from technological capability to public value. The critical role of experts, he argued, is not only to advise on technology but to help governments identify the problems that matter most to their communities. And he closed on an ethical note that lingered: not everything technologically possible is ethically, socially, or politically desirable. The most important contribution universities can make, in his telling, may be the attitudinal one – helping society ask why technology is being deployed and what purpose it actually serves. 

What an ideal partnership looks like 

Asked what an ideal university–government relationship would look like, the panel converged without quite agreeing. Manuel Sierra wanted universities to keep their traditional missions while opening their doors and acting as neutral conveners. Dirk Heberling called for physical and regulatory space to experiment – sandboxes and demonstration environments where emerging technologies can be tested before large-scale adoption. Rui Luís Andrade Aguiar focused on cultural change, arguing that local governments should publicly and systematically recognize university contributions, so that students and academics can take pride in civic impact and future engineers are motivated to engage. J. Ignacio Criado returned, fittingly, to critical reflection: universities should not simply accelerate technology deployment, but help society decide which innovations are genuinely desirable, legitimate, and valuable. 

Taken together, the session made a case that is easy to state and hard to act on. Universities are not peripheral educational institutions in the GovTech ecosystem. They are core infrastructure for capability, legitimacy, experimentation, and long-term societal adaptation. But infrastructure has to be maintained and the panel’s most honest conclusion was that the maintenance, in the form of incentives, funding, and recognition, is exactly what is missing. 

Key Takeaways 

• Universities are core infrastructure for GovTech, not peripheral players. They supply the talent, research, testing environments, and legitimacy that public innovation depends on. 

• Collaboration requires a mindset shift, not just expertise. University–government partnerships often stall on cultural differences before they stall on technical ones. 

• Incentives are the missing pieces. Academics who help governments are rarely rewarded for it, and universities receive little budgetary recognition, making engagement dependent on goodwill rather than structure. 

• Embedded expertise works best in teams. Technical advisers need to sit alongside people who understand law, governance, and political reality, neither succeed alone. 

• The real value is helping define the right problems. Universities’ most important contribution may be helping governments ask why technology is being used and what public purpose it serves, not just how to build it. 

The GovTech 4 Impact World Congress returns in 2027. To stay connected and be the first to hear about what comes next, visit g4i-congress.com and follow us on social media.  #G4I2027