In the era of knowledge-based societies, rapid knowledge creation and easy access to knowledge bases are considered to make key contributions to innovation. Particularly for making steady steps toward sustainability, it is crucial to implement innovation by integrating diverse fields of science and technology. Because scientific and technological progress is developing rapidly and the sources of knowledge are widely distributed in the field of sustainability, no single organization has all the necessary capacities to stay on top of all the various areas, and collaboration across organizational boundaries has become of critical importance. Collaboration between academia and society, however, is not always working effectively, because of various technical, economic, and organizational challenges, including establishment of academic approaches to trans-disciplinary research, its institutionalization, and coordination of seeds in science and needs in society. This session addresses a key question of how science and society co-evolve, creating, diffusing, and using scientific and technological knowledge for sustainability innovation. Experiences in different countries will be shared and examined for effective actions in the future. The structure, functions, and evolution of collaboration between academia and society will be discussed, drawing implications for strategy, public policy, and institutional design for bringing forth sustainability innovation.