Purpose: – The purpose of this paper is to resolve a tension in understanding how universities contribute to knowledge-based urban development (KBUD). Design/methodology/approach: – The paper is a conceptual paper, which analyses the tension as emerging between the university and the wider societal activity. The paper creates a framework for combining insights from both those theoretical frameworks to better understand why universities might choose to contribute to KBUD. Findings: – The paper argues that it is important to understand the benefits that the universities get from participating in the KBUD. This can be through the unique tacit knowledge that emerges in the social innovation process, but their might also be value for the university in terms of two other variables, material resources and symbolic legitimacy. Research limitations/implications: – The paper is a literature review and therefore is limited to raising a series of future questions and directions for research in the field, as well as to providing a lens and context for existing work. Practical implications: – There are clear implications for those seeking to improve universities contributions to KBUD. It is not merely enough for strategic leaders to come together and agree that promoting the university will promote KBUD: it is necessary to modify a range of processes within the university to ensure that a wide range of actors are able to benefit from participating in KBUD activities, and that it facilitates their own teaching and research activities. Social implications: – For universities to make a substantive contribution to promoting KBUD, policy-makers must ensure that they do not create disincentives through universities’ teaching and research activities. Originality/value: – This is the first time that a paper has sought to bridge between theories of urban development and social innovation, and universities’ internal institutional and organisational dynamics.

The financial evaluation of renewable energy sources (RES) projects is well explored in the literature, but many different methods have been followed by different authors. Then, it is important to understand if and how these methods have been changing and what factors may have driven new approaches. Therefore, this article aims to explore the publications on the financial evaluation of RES projects from 2011 to 2020 and to present a critical analysis of the reviewed literature. The methods for evaluating RES projects were grouped into four categories: (i) traditional metrics based on net present value, internal rate of return, and payback period; (ii) levelized cost of electricity; (iii) return on investment approach; and (iv) real options analysis. A quantitative analysis was carried out considering aspects related to the relevance of the authors, productivity by country, and the most relevant journals for each of these groups. Then, a qualitative analysis of the main characteristics of the five most cited articles in each group was conducted. The results show that the more traditional methods are still widely used for the financial evaluation of RES projects. However, approaches based on the levelized cost and real options have been growing in importance to tackle the complex features of financial evaluation and comparison of RES projects.