Measuring the Social Innovation Impact of Extension and Social Outreach Projects in Higher Education Institutions Through the Quintuple Helix Framework

Sustainability challenges increasingly require higher education institutions (HEIs) to demonstrate measurable social, institutional, and environmental impacts through their extension and social outreach activities. Within this context, social innovation has emerged as a key mechanism for advancing sustainable development, particularly when framed through collaboration models involving multiple actors, such as the Quintuple Helix (QH) framework. Although the QH model emphasizes the strategic role of academia in innovation oriented toward sustainability, the contribution of HEIs to generating sustainable social impacts remains insufficiently measured. This study proposes and validates a statistical model to assess social innovation impacts oriented toward sustainability and generated by university extension projects, based on the articulation among academia, industry, government, civil society, and the natural environment. Using data from 77 Colombian universities collected between 2019 and 2024, the research applies a methodological approach implemented in two sequential phases, combining Principal Component Analysis and Structural Equation Modeling. The results confirm the robustness, reliability, and empirical validity of the proposed model, allowing HEIs to be classified according to their levels of global and governmental sustainability impact. This article is a revised and extended version of the conference paper titled “Incidence of the Quintuple Helix Model on Social Innovation Generated in University Extension Projects from the ‘Impact’ Variable”, presented at the International Conference on Project Management (ICPM2024), held in Bogotá, Colombia, on 6 September 2024.