Universities of applied sciences (UAS) have a strong mandate to carry out research, development and innovation (RDI) activities in collaboration with local stakeholders. Geographical proximity is one of the key factors for the creation and success of RDI activities because of the positive balance between costs and benefits of local knowledge transfer, but they also depend on the networks of individual staff members. This paper aims to explore how maintaining and developing purpose-built and individual RDI partnerships during the COVID-19 pandemic has been managed. An enhanced conceptual framework for assessing contextual dimensions of the RDI activities beyond academic entrepreneurship as business ventures has been developed. The paper focuses on a single case study drawing on semi-structured research interviews investigating how the swap to remote working have affected RDI activities at Tampere University of Applied Sciences, one of the biggest UAS in Finland with intense regional linkages. The contribution of the study is twofold; firstly, the paper introduces an expanded theoretical approach for assessing the external and internal factors having an impact on the RDI activities beyond academic entrepreneurship. Secondly, by testing the proposed framework, it shares insights and good practices derived from empirical evidence, namely binary data and semi-structured interviews revealing experiences of RDI personnel and project managers involved with different phases of RDI process, for optimising high-quality innovation support, knowledge transfer activities and co-creation of new knowledge in exceptional circumstances.