Magazine Summer 2012 Research Feature

How to Create Productive Partnerships With Universities

Too often, companies pursue collaboration with university researchers in an ad hoc, piecemeal manner. But by giving more thought to the relationship structure, companies can achieve better results.

Markus Perkmann and Ammon Salter Reading Time: 27 min 

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Image courtesy of Novartis
The pharmaceutical companies Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck and Pfizer have invested together in open science initiatives even though they are otherwise fierce competitors.

Image courtesy of Novartis

Companies increasingly recognize that to successfully innovate they cannot exclusively rely on their internal R&D. Working with external partners allows them to access different pools of knowledge and save R&D costs.1 Universities are among the external partners that offer high promise, since they allow access to an enormous global pool of talent and skills.

Sometimes managers think dealing with universities equals only “technology transfer.” While the use of university-owned intellectual property2 has spurred much innovation in business, it is only the tip of the iceberg. Rather than merely licensing inventions, another often-underappreciated opportunity for companies is to get help from universities during the whole life cycle of their innovation projects.3 For example, in the United Kingdom, businesses already spend more than 20 times more on university collaboration than on licensing technology from universities.4

However, working with universities poses considerable challenges for managers.5 Two fundamental issues afflict collaboration. First, the open nature of academic science is at times in conflict with companies’ need to protect technologies they use. Second, while academic research focuses on long-term challenges and thus may move more slowly, industrial R&D is driven by time-sensitive product development projects and day-to-day project solving. As a result, companies can sometimes find universities too slow and too bureaucratic to be good partners. Given that in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, expenditures on higher education R&D represent about $160 billion per annum, businesses that don’t work with universities may be missing opportunities of significant proportions.6

These tensions are exacerbated by the fact that companies’ collaborations with universities are often pursued in an ad hoc, piecemeal manner, led by individual initiatives rather than any corporate strategy. Managers who would never dream of leaving their customer or supplier relationships to chance may take an ad hoc approach to their university relationships, which can lead to duplication of effort, lost opportunities or squabbles over intellectual property.

Our research suggests that businesses can structure their relationships with universities in ways that make them much more valuable. (See “About the Research.�

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About the Authors

Markus Perkmann is a senior research fellow and Ammon Salter is a professor of technology and innovation management at Imperial College Business School, Imperial College London.

References (29)

1. H. Chesbrough, “Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting From Technology” (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2003).

2. Patents represent the commercially most important type of intellectual property for universities.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge support from the U.K. Economic and Social Research Council via the Advanced Institute of Management Research (RES-331-27-0063 and EP/C534239/1), the U.K. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council via the Innovation Studies Centre (EP/F036930/1) and the UK Innovation Research Centre (RES-598-28-0001), which is funded by the ESRC, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, the U.K. Department for Business Innovation & Skills and the Technology Strategy Board.

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Comments (3)
John Greer
This article seems like window dressing.  Like an extensive news article that just summarizes the current situation and doesn't get to the heart of the issue.

At the end of the day, everyone is selfish and they will only work together if there is something in it for them.  I don't say this to be cynical but to explore this idea to its fullest.

Partnerships will only work when both sides are compensated in the SHORT term (while the long term is the goal).  What do university professors/researchers really want?  (grant money for their next study, a study that leads to as many citations as possible which usually means the study has no practical applications, prestige, etc.)  (These priorities need to change btw)  What do the corporations want?  Research results that they can use in the next few months.  How do you align these disparate interests?
Reza Putra
"Third, the emphasis in managing the project should be on the results. But the academics should be given flexibilities in defining the objectives." How do we achieve that?
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