Proximity of Practice: Student-Practitioner Collaboration in Tourism

There is a widespread acknowledgement among European policy-makers that higher education may potentially contribute to enhancing competitiveness of tourism. This has led to a sheer explosion of specific measures encouraging knowledge transfer with the private sector. Despite the importance of knowledge flow processes, the role of universities and students has been little researched or linked to the understanding of innovation defectiveness in tourism. Followed by a critical review of knowledge transfer and learning processes in generic development and tourism literature, the chapter presents an illustrative case from an innovation course on a Danish Master program in tourism. The case describes and discusses challenges in working with, creating and implementing innovation through student-practitioner collaboration. It is argued that successful innovation is not solely, as previously argued in innovation literature, conditioned by either geographical or social/relational proximity, but also by what we have termed proximity of practice.