The field of innovation studies is both very recent and constituted through a variety of disciplines. It has become one of the dominant discourses of the modern research university driving reforms, the changing relationship of the university to the knowledge economy and international rankings of institutions. This thesis reviews these literatures and their implications for a student-centred view. Specifically, the thesis examines the literature of innovation in economics, reviewing and analysing the work of three selected theorists – List, Schumpeter, and Lundvall – and the figure of the innovator as entrepreneur. The predominant economic understanding of innovation treats the process of innovation as a black box and neoliberalism views innovation as a means of increasing productivity, largely ignoring the student's contribution. This thesis argues that students’ capacity for innovation, which is already present in their subjectivities as tacit knowledge is enhanced through the use open architectures and digital platforms that becomes the basis for social innovation as a form of collective intelligence in higher education. This new model of open and social innovation is a very different notion to the standard economic view, bringing to the fore the ethics of collaboration in the service of peer and co-production that is more suited to the digital age of social media.