As a senior executive at STPUAS Hannes' success story as could be compared to that of a coach leading his team from regional competitions to the European Champions League. While STPUAS is currently the only university of applied sciences in Europe that coordinates both a European University Alliance and a pilot project of the EIT-HEI initiative, a few years ago it was only of regional relevance as an Austrian average UAS. Hannes strives to co-create future universities that integrate challenge-based professional education, mission-oriented research, human-centred innovation as well as open and engaged knowledge exchange as interrelated core areas. Therefore, he promotes an academic culture based on inclusion, inspiration, innovation, internationalization and interactivity that has enabled various good practices to empower interdisciplinary, cross-sectoral collaboration, to empower women in ICT, to bridge digital transformation, creativity and the arts and many others. Since an intensive exchange with a broad public is particularly important to him, he has, among other things, managed several projects as part of the European Researchers Night. Numerous initiatives he co-initiated, such as SMARTUP St. Pölten, Creative Pre-Incubator and Digital Makers Hub, support SMEs, startups and spin-offs. Finally, Hannes co-created the European University E³UDRES² and the corresponding entrepreneurship and innovation network E.I.N.S. to unfold creative talents, strengthen future universities, connect regionally anchored innovation ecosystems across Europe and support small and medium-sized cities and their rural areas to transform into smart and sustainable regions.

Key to success is to act as a platform for collaborative open innovation to manage relationships with a wide variety of diverse stakeholders across the knowledge square and enable interaction between them, to promote the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation and to expand the markets for external use of innovation rather than considering students and their future employers as customers, and degrees and publications as products. It is important to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration, promote applied research, offer a wide range of opportunities for cooperations with companies, facilitate open innovation and knowledge transfer in a broad sense, support innovative education, encourage faculty innovation, promote student entrepreneurship with a strategic concept like “7 steps to startup”, enhance open innovation platforms and associations.
The most important learned lessons can be summed up as follows: empower smart individuals rather than enforcing performance through to narrow defined objectives and indicators; enable collaboration across the boundaries of departments as well as across generations, disciplines and branches; establish a diverse set interaction with the industry ranging from informal meetings to strategic long-term partnerships; act along the institutions’ own strategy instead of reacting to every upcoming trend; learn from the best institutions and have a close eye on ideas to be developed off the beaten tracks outside or on the brink of common academic ecosystems, study and maybe adopt their structures and concepts, but don’t try to copy them.

With the colleagues from STPUAS we implement our vision: As a European University, we are an inspirational source of knowledge transfer and the acquisition of skills for all people who care about contributing to an inclusive and progressive society. The strategy highlights six key orientations: (1) We create added value for society, (2) We promote student centered teaching and learning, (3) We strengthen staff members and teams, (4) We expand our research, (5) We recognise and use our market opportunities and (6) We are a European University. Thus, most important for Hannes Raffaseder as a university-leader in the near future is the further development of E³UDRES², the Engaged and Entrepreneurial European University as Driver for European Smart and Sustainable Regions, to reach a substantial leap in quality, performance, attractiveness and competitiveness. While E³UDRES² started from scratch in October 2020 with an initial six universities, the alliance will already include 9 universities, 36 associated partners and expanded partnerships with universities and their local communities from the Western Balkans and Ukraine during its next phase from October 2023. As Lead Coordinator Hannes continues to implement five strategic core objectives of E³UDRES²: (1) Enable Smart Learners to unfold talents; (2) Serve as a platform for collaborative innovation to connect entrepreneurial minds; (3) Engage in regional communities to contribute to a peaceful and prosperous society; (4) Empower Ent-r-e-novators (entrepreneurs, researchers, educators and innovators) to accelerate future universities; (5) Shift to a fully-fledged European university to ensure excellent quality.