The social dimension of innovation is growing due to unprecedented wicked global challenges we all face, including COVID-19 pandemic. Those challenges in their dynamic complexity require new cross-scale, cross-domain and action-oriented approaches at the universities. I argue that universities need to go beyond their traditional missions and to take an active role in a transformative change by working with their communities and creating real social impact. The fourth mission concept is particularly relevant as it puts emphasis on the universities roles in sustainable development. I propose to reflect on those new roles of universities in the context of quadruple/quintuple helix model that is seen as playing an important role in fostering the shift from technical to social innovations. Social innovation is an element of a regional innovation system, in which the importance of knowledge is not determined exclusively by competitiveness and productivity, but by taking into account the creation of social well-being, the impact on the quality of life and co-creation of knowledge as part of public–private partnerships. By addressing social innovation practices from a perspective of Polish public universities, it fills the gap of relatively few studies on institutional change and incentive structures that influences the ability of universities to engage in social innovation by proposing. I propose to adapt the socially engaged university model that could be a tool for stimulating and strengthening their functions within a modern regional innovation system allowing for an active role of civil society organisations.

由于我们都面临着前所未有的严峻全球挑战，包括 COVID-19 大流行，创新的社会层面正在增长。这些动态复杂性方面的挑战需要大学采用新的跨规模、跨领域和以行动为导向的方法。我认为，大学需要超越其传统使命，通过与社区合作并创造真正的社会影响，在变革中发挥积极作用。第四个使命概念特别重要，因为它强调大学在可持续发展中的作用。我建议在四重/五重螺旋模型的背景下反思大学的这些新角色，该模型被视为在促进从技术创新到社会创新的转变方面发挥着重要作用。社会创新是区域创新体系的一个组成部分，其中，知识的重要性不仅取决于竞争力和生产力，而且还考虑到社会福利的创造、对生活质量的影响以及作为公私伙伴关系一部分的知识共同创造。通过从波兰公立大学的角度解决社会创新实践，它填补了相对较少的关于影响大学参与社会创新能力的制度变迁和激励结构研究的空白。我建议调整社会参与型大学模式，该模式可以作为一种工具，在现代区域创新体系中激发和加强其职能，让民间社会组织发挥积极作用。