HEIs are increasingly engaged in society and therefore play a growing role in regional and social development. Consequently, they are faced with a rapid expansion of their responsibilities (Klein & Pereira, 2021). To achieve sustainable higher education institutes must respond to societal challenges in an entrepreneurial manner and promote co-creation (i.e., continuous cooperation) with external stakeholders (Bikse et al., 2016).
Nowadays, co-creation is increasingly taking place in digital environments due to international projects with physical distance between stakeholders or as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic (De Silva et al., 2021). With increasing international collaboration, successful cooperation in the digital domain is becoming more and more critical.
However, to date, social entrepreneurship in the digital sphere has been somewhat neglected, leading to a lack of insights into successful digital co-creation between HEIs and NGOs (Polese et al., 2021).
In addition, traditional co-creation methods have also shown little to no suitability for the digital space as they are primarily based on face-to-face interaction between individuals (Alam, 2020). So far, a holistic perspective on digital co-creation that integrates academics and practitioners has been missing.