Industry-University Collaboration

1
Industry-University Collaboration

• A Social Science Perspective

Jason RutterESRC Centre for Research on
Innovation and Competition (CRIC)The University
of ManchesterJason.Rutter_at_manchester.ac.uk
2
Overview

• A Personal context
• Advantages to collaboration
• Disadvantage to collaboration
• Relationships
• Money
• Research
• Intellectual Property
• Delivering

3
Personal Background

• An unusual path?
• Degree in Theatre
• PhD on Stand-up Comedy
• Followed by research posts on
• Internet interactions
• E-dissemination of social science
• E-commerce
• Computer games
• Mobile telephony
• Counterfeiting
• Marie Curie Conference Manchester (MC2) 9-13th
  April 2006

4
The unusual path?

• Academic research increasingly more
• Mobile
• Employment contracts (temporary and part-time)
• Movement of staff between institutions
• Uneven impact child/family care, disability,
  language, economic stability, brain drain, etc.
• Changing in focus especially in areas of
  technology
• Set by commercial concerns
• National/International funding
• Industry/Policy
• Students
• How flexible are you as a researcher, academic,
  person?

5
Research Context

• Most of the work I have done has been with
• Governmental agencies
• Policy agencies
• Trade Associations
• Comparative little directly with industry
  (outside FP)
• Triple helix

6
Why so little industry collaboration?

• SMEs especially have little RD resources (Time
  Money)
• Driven by quarterly economic cycles
• Research must be cost effective and deliver
  measurable results quickly
• Interest in research but market means this is
  weighted toward technological innovation

7
Advantages of Collaboration

• For academia
• Money
• Funding of your time
• Funding of research staff
• Access to industry resources
• Access to industry knowledge
• Access to industry contacts
• Esteem

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Advantages of Collaboration

• For industry
• Access to world class researchers
• Access to state of the art knowledge of the field
• Access to innovative background/sideground
  knowledge data
• Independence of findings
• Esteem
• Academic research can offer depth not always
  found in commercial research
• Complements (rather than substitutes) industry RD

9
Disadvantages of Collaboration

• For academia
• Loss of academic freedom
• Potential loss of staff
• Research agenda set outside your host institution
  Leverage effect 7 of research funding
  influences 20-25 of research
• Being drawn out established academic
  activities teaching/training, publishing, long
  term research, administration Career
  progression?
• Correlation between industry funding and academic
  output far from simple.

10
Disadvantages of Collaboration

• For industry
• Contribution only marginal
• Can take staff away from other demands
• Not business like
• Disagreement over IPR implementation
• Academics often have a different notion of what
  protecting IP means.

11
Key Issues to Consider

• Getting in
• Getting on
• Getting out

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Key Issues to Consider

• Developing relationships
• Money
• Research concerns
• Handling intellectual property
• The final product

13
Building Relationships with Industry

• People buy people
• Industry interested in funding their research not
  subsidising yours
• What are you offering them?
• Be aware of who else has approached industry
• Can you use their experience contacts
• Where does your work complement, improve on this?
• Establish what resources your institution has for
  funding loss leading work

14

• If men are from Mars and women are from Venus
  where the hell are academics from?

15
Learn to Talk the Talk

• Be confident in the ability of you (and your
  team)
• Be problem led
• Use the language of your funder not your
  discipline
• Learn to pass in the culture
• Answer the questions asked not the questions
  you heard
• Be aware of industry time demands and try to
  avoid crunch times
• Stop selling when youve got a buyer

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The smooth ride

• Who actually makes decisions?
• How is risk and change managed?
• Learn to handle the committee and the strong
  personality with diplomacy. Sometimes it pays to
  ignore the elephant in the corner.
• Be professional even in informal environments.

17
The money

• Your good but perhaps not that good
• Recognise what is a legitimate cost and what is a
  reasonable cost
• Equipment
• Research costs
• Analysis costs
• Staff
• Travel subsistence
• Consumables
• Dissemination reports
• Entertainment
• Keep on top of invoicing, keeping receipts,
  checking payments schedules
• Partners like to be paid on time too. Keep them
  informed.
• Are you insured?
• Where is the added value for all involved?

18
Developing Research

• Be realistic about working to their timescale
• Be clear about what the research will and will
  not include
• Agree the methods, outputs, style of report(s)
• Take the responsibility of agreeing everything
  again after meetings
• Do not ignore the importance of contracts,
  non-disclosure agreements, etc.
• Unethical research is poor research

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Intellectual Property

• Academic research is about generating IP
• but traditionally then giving it away.
• IP is a valuable asset for both universities and
  industry.
• Need to develop an awareness of this and the
  potential/pitfalls involved.

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Intellectual Property

• At the proposal negotiation stage establish
• Who owns what IP
• Who is paying for that IP
• If you dont own the IP, you may not be able to
  use it for
• Teaching
• Conference presentation
• Publication
• The basis of further research

21
The Final Product

• Deliver well-presented outputs on time
• Always put time into a good Executive Summary
• Double check spelling, grammar, charts, etc
• Take a break and check them again
• Be clear about who might talk to the media and
  what the agreed line is.

22
Conclusions

• Industry-University collaboration can be both the
  best of times and worst of times
• Hard work not only on research side
• Not always academically rewarding but awareness
  of process helps immensely
• Huge potential for developing work not
  sustainable in university only environment
• Doing useful research has a great feel good
  factor.

23
Industry-University Collaboration

• A Social Science Perspective

Jason RutterESRC Centre for Research on
Innovation and Competition (CRIC)The University
of ManchesterJason.Rutter_at_manchester.ac.uk