Practises in R and D
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Three key points about strengthening industry-university collaboration: 1. While university research projects often achieve promising outcomes, they frequently fail to translate into tangible impacts for partner companies. 2. The authors conducted a two-year study of over 50 university projects partnered with 27 multinational companies. 3. The study identified nine best practices for managing collaborations, including criteria for partner selection, project management practices, and establishing internationally competitive research platforms to solve challenges for both industry and society.
Practises in R and D
- 1. Stavros P. Thomas and Anderson A. Lucas
- 2. C O L L A B O R A T I O N Strengthening Industry- University CollaborationUniversities can be the most critical resources in a company’s innovation strategy. However, to establish value creation and knowledge sharing from research, companies need to follow these nine rules. BY STAVROS P. THOMAS AND ANDERSON. LUCAS MOST PREVIOUS STUDIES of industry-university collaboration have framed the analysis of such alliances in terms of research project outcomes, defined here as a result that creates a business value for a company, such as guidance for the direction of technology development. From a business point of view, however, research outcome is of only a part of the complete success. What matters is not outcome but impact on the market— on the customers or at least how the new knowledge derived from a collaboration with a university can contribute to a company’s optimum performance. Are new products or tools and practices have made possible? New and more effective manufacturing, operating and management processes? Has already been produced innovative software or tools that enable greater logistical efficiencies and risks management? What about the IPR framework that enhances open innovation and knowledge sharing? And what about new design and processes? Managers in the wind energy industry see working with academia as beneficial only to the extent that it advances the company toward its goals. The focus of our research, therefore, was on the impact of the potential alliances and synergistic interactions on organization products, processes or employees, as evaluated both by the direct wind power industry managers of university projects and by senior technical personnel employed in wind power plants. While managing the collaboration with universities, including developing supporting schemes as the 'Engineer the Future' program in Denmark, are important, and lengthy, precursors to the collaboration, this study primary strategic goals are: • Establish mutually beneficial research collaborations. • Increase synergies between students, companies and wind power sector organizations. • Facilitate dialogue between students, faculty members, researchers and external research collaborators. Our strategy is concentrated on four areas 1. Matchmaking 2. Increasing focus on innovation and entrepreneurship in education 3. Seamless commercialization and technology transfer processes 4. Enhancing strategic dialogue with private enterprise Collaborations between university researchers and companies can result in project outcomes that have a major impact on a THE LEADING QUESTION How can companies achieve reasonable influence from industry- university research col- laborations? FINDINGS There is a significant gap in academic intuitions collaborations: Promising outcomes of university projects often fail to translate into tangible impacts for the companies involved. Nine best practices are our proposed solution to layer this gap. ANEMORPHOSIS EDU
- 3. C O L L A B O R A T I O N ABOUT THE RESEARCH This article reports the results of a two-year study aimed at determining the reflection of research collaborations between the academy and industrial partners and last yet not least, reveal the best practices for industry- university partnerships Data were collected at 27 research-intensive multinational companies from the wind power, information technology, materials, consumer electronics, automotive, pharmaceutical, and fishery industries. Seven questionnaires and surveys were conducted for more than 50 university projects sponsored-funded by the companies. We asked the compa- nies involved in this research, to provide examples both of successful projects and those that failed to meet expectations. We determined the satisfaction of the collaboration with a series of questions on two distinct levels: (1) Did the collaboration achieve what it set out to do and if so, (2) What were the consequences for the company? The former gave information that related to the project’s outcome. The latter en- abled evaluation of the project’s subsequent im- pact on the company. Quantitative and qualita- tive information regarding the levels of success of the collaborations were obtained, leading to our identification of nine practices for managing such collaborations. Considerable attention has been paid in recent years to the transformative nature for the educational institutions and industry with regards to the strategic partnerships. Much of the discussion has focused on the characteristics of the institutional policies and regulations needed to initiate, develop and establish an effective research collaboration framework. Since 2000 several EU Commission taxonomies have also been developed to distinguish the most important parameters between the outcomes of collaboration for both parties involved and assess the various economic and social benefits as a whole. With this report, we pursued to determine, in a measurable way, “best practices” for the selection process — the management and the development of relationships that enable a company to start a research partnership with a university and to evaluate the outcomes of this collaboration to the industry, the economy, the local region or society. To identify the best practices and their potential effects, we surveyed more than 50 projects at 27 multinational companies that engage in research collaborations with several universities in the EU zone. By using qualitative and critical thinking questionaries’ we identified seven practices that had a significant and fully applicable impact for the industry-university research collaborations success. The first four practices are related to criteria for selecting the strategic collaboration in the first place. These practices provide the foundation for the selection and management criteria of the educational institutions research procedures to the company. The last three address issues of project management and also provide insights on the structural framework required to establish internationally competitive and interdisciplinary research platforms.. Although the specific focus was on wind power industry’s collaborations with academia, these lessons have broader applicability. Indeed, this set of best practices could apply to management and integration into a company of any externally performed research. These outcomes may thus also be applicable to collaborations with non-university research organizations such as government laboratories and nonprofit organizations. This work was a result of the main observation that industry-university collaborations often produce interesting outcomes and innovative solutions but those outcomes have minor or no impact on company productivity or competitiveness. The main scope is to establish internationally competitive, interdisciplinary research platforms with constructive synergies between the industry and academies. These may offer the opportunity to solve urgent challenges facing society and industry itself. Hence, by organizing workshops, where individuals (students, investors, and managers, as well as management from companies and the Academia) can meet and establish research platforms. Integrating entrepreneurship and practical knowledge into the academies could bridge the gap between commercialization and practicality-applicability. Develop an ecosystem to support student start-ups, as an integral part of our education system. Establish interdisciplinary summer schools focused on innovation. Set up master’s programs and industrial doctoral which integrate entrepreneurship and innovation with an academic discipline. Enhance students’ focus on new ideas by supporting their participation in events based on entrepreneurship and innovation However, a partnership between an academic institution and a company which concludes that a proposed method is the right tool to solve an issue or mitigate a risk, fails to seek answers to several important questions such as: What is the nature of the activity in which universities engage in collaborative research? What are the distinctive features of the learning associated with teaching and research? What are the public as opposed to the private benefits from such learning? Who should therefore pay for the costs incurred? ANEMORPHOSIS EDU
- 4. Executive Director, Anthony M. Boccanfuso, in his book Researcher Guidebook highlights the most important parameters to allow for mutual benefit during the negotiation of sponsored research agreements between institutions and companies. •High-value, or in other words high- return institutional-industrial research is collaborative and, thus, requires management from both parties. •Collaborative research programs involving small businesses are different than those with large corporations. •Differences in approaches to legal policy and intellectual property (IP) policy in institutional-industrial research collaborations may occurred and therefore require substantial discussions within and between the collaborating organizations to be handled successfully. •A central office within each organization specifically dedicated to coordinating efforts to enhance research collaboration is a useful and necessary resource at both institutions and industrial organizations. •Better results accumulate when partnering is structured for long-term relationships as opposed to short- term, one-time projects. •Metrics for evaluating these collaborations should transcend the size of an award to an institution or the development of a new commercial product; rather, many other factors may contribute to success, such as workforce development, access to specialized equipment and other factors of importance to the parties. •Very few institutional-industrial collaborations are identical and both parties need to recognize the inherent organizational qualities affecting any collaboration. •Most research institutions have a history of working with industry and pursue ANEMORPHOSIS RESEARCH GROUP REVIEW THE NINE KEYS TO COLLABORATION SUCCESS
- 5. approaches that mirror their institutions’ value and culture. The same is true for industry, some companies have a long history of institutional engagement; others do not. to the university team ideas, suggestions and potential linkages to other company activities. Companies may have physical resources that an institution cannot access any other way. Companies are typically interested in questions that require applied research, which can be difficult to fund through most EU funding sources. When an institutional laboratory is interested in pursuing applied research or experiments that lead to product development, non-industry funding sources may be limited. Companies can bring tacit knowledge of the product development process, which is otherwise proprietary and generally unattainable to the academic community. Corporate partners can bring experience to a collaboration that can provide the foresight to prevent a PI from committing mistakes already made in industry. On the basis of this research, we propose nine practices that organizations and companies should follow to get the most value out of their investigation collaborations with industry. While following this set of practices will not guarantee success in such partnerships, it will help company R&D managers and universities teams to identify the drawbacks that affected many partnerships and last but not least, realize more of their business potential. Taken together, these practices can measurably improve the capability of industry-university collaboration to have positive reflection on company products and processes. When a partnership relationship is established between an institution and an industry partner, has the potential to inflate along with corporate expansion to generate new research collaborations, improved capabilities and contribute to the further success and growth of the segment in general. ANEMORPHOSIS EDU Industry-university collaborations must be aligned with the company’s research and development strategy and address a tangible need of the organization. If not, there is high risk of investing time and money in projects that have little or no impact. A senior researcher stated: “I wish someone had told me the right objectives of my research when I was just getting started” Thus, it is crucial to ensure that there is a an absolutely clear objective of the project and that the organization’s commercial strategy and research collaboration are well determined.” The most important part of this practice is to establish a reliable and consistent vision within the company about what the university project will provide to the industry or the company itself. University research that lacks both a link to the company’s R&D portfolio and a company unit that cares about the result is unlikely to be given enough attention to prove useful. University projects with links to internal company interests create a strong continuing basis for collaboration when the research complements the company’s own R&D or when the project is consid- ered important for the company’s technological
- 6. C O L L A B O R A T I O N Several mechanisms and tactics could successfully establish innovation and collaboration with research institutions in order to sustain profitable growth and innovation. 1Access to Resources. Institutions can provide tangible and intangible resources to solve a problem industry may not currently have the time, expertise, or facilities to do in-house, while offering a valuable IP portfolio is also an advantage. 2Geographic Diversity. Collaborations are able to layer geographic barriers through site visits, personnel exchanges, placements and internships opportunities. 3Time Management. Short time frames are the most preferable option among industries while long-term contracts is the choice of the academy. 4Types of Knowledge Sharing: knowledge management, knowledge mobilization, knowledge exchange, knowledge transfer, knowledge to action and others. 5Technology Licensing. Institutional licensing organizations are very few and far between. However, several institutions have made dramatic changes to their industry-sponsored research and IP policies 6 Creating Long-Term Relationships. Key factors for successful institutional-industrial collaborative arrangements include: •Compatible Partner Selection •Initial Planning and Structuring of the Collaborative Arrangements •Proper Implementation of the Project and its Deliverables Clear and concise objectives are critical to project success because they help ensure that project stakeholders will develop a: • Common understanding of what the project is attempting to do, and • Commitment to the same objectives. An objective should be written in a way that it can be evaluated at the conclusion of a project to see whether it was achieved. A well-worded objective will be Specific, Measurable, Attainable / Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound (SMART). Note that the objective should be specific, measurable achievable and realistic. In general, objectives should conclude the deliverables of the project. Moreover, having a company executive as a responsible person for the project can be helpful in terms of support, 2 but there is no evidence that this could be an important factor for a strong connection of the university team with the company research and development strategy. For the research uptake to have impact the issue is not whether there is support at a high level; it is whether the project addresses a real need as perceived by the company’s working engineers. This latter fact is verified by a pragmatic paradigm of a collaboration sponsored by a wind energy engineering company. The partnership established from a suggestion by a member of the board of directors who thought it would be useful to have a strong connection to a prestigious university laboratory with a major research presence in the field. The senior management staff agreed and provided funds for a project proposed by the head of the laboratory. The wind power company supported the project for four years, some of the work has been performed using company’s IT tools and the project produced several publications. From the university perspective, the project was challenging and the results were informative and instructive, leading to better understanding of the CoE mitigation in the O&M for wind energy plants. However, both parties failed to identify the pragmatic problems and challenges the wind power company faced or the associated constraints on their O&M processes. Thus, they took no ownership of the project and paid no considerable attention to its results, despite the strong desire of the university team to implement the proposed solution in realistic terms. Outsourced development projects are principally complex, as they cross both external (industrial-vendor) and internal boundaries (among universities groups and members of the organization). The boundary spanning practice to assess the quality of the external and internal synergies among the groups involved is a significantly important factor on the success of the collaboration between institutions and organizations. The foundational scope of a collaborated research project is to provide a deeper insight into possible solutions that may lay in an organization’s structure and culture, often beyond the project’s lifetime. The focus on quality of communication and internal -external synergies effectiveness could make an important contribution on project management and inter-organizational collaborations in general. Early studies focused on communication practices effectiveness to analyze how boundary spanning parties interact internally or externally (e.g., Ancona and Caldwell, 1988; Sawyer, Guinan and Cooprider, 2008; Friedman and Podolny, 1992) and how their behavior affects the collaboration performance as a whole. These “boundary spanners” is the cornerstone by which knowledge is acquired from external sources and distributed among the organization. Companies dependent on IT for example, significantly rely on a particular category of boundary spanner — the IT boundary spanner — to acquire and implement this technology successfully. Operative IT boundary spanners, are critical factors to facilitate knowledge sharing and value creation. Boundary spanning contributes to the success of industry-university partnership in two principal ways. First, there is an extensive distribution of the research outcomes inside the organization. Second, may provide feedback to the research groups through information acquired from the company’s technical community, an innovative mechanism for keeping the research aligned with the organization’s needs. A boundary spanning example was found in collaboration between a university and IT company. The company’s project manager was a senior developer in the R&D department and the university PhD project was seen as basic, common research, far away from producing anything that would affect company’s operation or productivity. However, the project manager decided to visit individuals in the company’s manufacturing operations, as a part of an internal motivation strategy procedure. These real time interactions and dialogue in turn led to new proposals about how the next IT tools might be evolved and integrated into the development process. They also provided valuable information on the best direction for the project to be proceed, a direction the project manager,
- 7. himself, would not otherwise have considered. As the above paradigm demonstrates, openness, creativity, interaction and dialogue could successfully establish the diversity of ideas, facilitate the knowledge transfer process and last but not least, enhance critical thinking and ideas generation among the parties involved in the research. The most common tools and methodologies to ensure boundary spanning are the internal technical presentations, continuously training and employee participation in technical conferences, seminars and webinars. Distributed Sense-making in Boundary-Spanning Groups These practices should also facilitate the identification of new ideas, mechanisms and applications that could also lead to challenging and interesting-not envisioned in the original objective statement. It is significantly important to ensure that openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, and agreeableness are well defined prior the collaboration process. The outcomes of the survey conducted; show that academic research is more likely to have positive impact on a company if the research community has a good knowledge of the business strategic objectives, company’s practices-methodologies and how the research performed match up with the company's business objectives. These circumstances occurred more often when university researchers had a previous experience or involved in the same or similar industry projects during their career. Their professional experience could provide them the insight into bridging the gaps between research procedures and industry practices. If university researchers do not already have this background, the project manager should provide that knowledge to them via training, seminars or collaboration with other professionals in their field. However, it is true that some managers prefer not to reveal the pragmatic scope and goals of the research to the university researchers. This could be happened because of the potential concerns about losing a competitive edge in science and technology. To have a better understanding of the justification of openness in science, it will be useful to consider information sharing as an aspect of social epistemology. The principle instructs inquirers to share information, which helps to promote the epistemological goals of the group, such as truth, avoidance of error, knowledge, and explanation. There are several ways that openness promotes the goals of science; however, it is also important to identify the potential conflicts between internal and external science fields. Again, a company from the wind power industry was the real life example of this “secrecy” phenomenon. The company set up a three-year project with a University in Denmark to analyze the most economically and technical efficient solution for the energy yield assessment in offshore wind power facilities. The company project manager shared the specific company needs, but did not realistically explain how the project outcomes could fit into the company’s CoE mitigation strategy. The project manager informed us that this was a clear choice; the organization, he said, “is really concerned when it comes to revealing its technology strategy.” The correspondent result was that the outcomes delivered by the two researchers met the need in a way that was not consistent and reliable with other strategic considerations and thus, no value to the company released. Although openness has considerable influence over academic research, secrecy rules industrial research. Companies treat scientific research as trade secrets, and usually share data and results only to meet legal requirements or achieve financial goals. Companies use knowledge for competitive advantage, and treat information as proprietary. If a scientist works for a company, he or she usually signs a non- disclosure agreement (NDA), which obligates him or her not to disclose any information obtained during employment without the company’s permission. ANEMORPHOSIS EDU
- 8. C O L L A B O R A T I O N Ray Dart, Director and Associate Professor of the Business Administration Program at Trent University listed some critical questions with regards to the long term partnerships between academia and industry. Through the proposed collaboration how will the group better and more efficiently connect with other groups of people or communities? Are these connections strategic enough to help the collaborators succeed? What impact does a smaller connection? Who will do what project? Who will commit their resources (people, monetary, etc) to which aspects? Industry and university institutions conduct research on different time slots. Industry is usually driven by economic and product life-cycle, while academic research projects duration depends largely on the time required for a postgraduate program. Both parties, thus should be open and realistic with regards to the time frames required. The development of multi-year collaboration programs, such as the Danish Engineer campaign-the technological alliance that bring together Danish engineers and technology experts could layer the time frame gaps. It is crucial to understand that only via longer collaboration time periods; research teams develop better understanding of the research problem and the goals of their investigation. According to the results of the survey, the effects of long term collaborations are: Improve the knowledge in many scientific fields Be always open to the world through what we call “open innovation” Create from upstream new models for evaluation of the actives safety and performance, by using very varied tools and methods Tackle societal challenges Establish Science excellence In order for an institutional-industrial relationship to be truly successful, there needs to be regular and frequent communication between the parties. These interaction channels could facilitate information flow and effectively clear up misunderstandings and confusion and help build a solid relationship. Personal interactions, interviews and presentations are also crucial in the transmission of unspecified objectives such as details of design or development practices and thus, foster the success of the collaboration. Working with the survey results we concluded that one of the most important keys to establish project progress efficiency has been “a lot of communication“ – in terms of what works, what does not work, from where the information is originated, are the outcomes realistic etc. A plethora of useful attitudes coming along with the opinions of other parties and thus keeping the communications line open is a part of a multi-purpose process. Therefore, a communication plan is important to realize the full potential of the collaboration, keep things rolling and helping to prevent the project itself from drifting away from its original purpose. The key aspects of such a plan may include: A kick-off meeting, regular informal progress meetings (weekly or monthly, by phone, skype or in person, if possible), a formal update meeting, periodic reports management, and a final close-out meeting. What it is more; companies are improving their collaboration tactics with universities by sending their personnel experts on extended stays as visiting scientists, or by providing internship opportunities for graduate students, placements, seminars, training, webinars, etc. Establishing and maintaining project awareness within the industry is vital to an organization’s progress and success. A robust and properly implemented awareness framework could assist the organization with the education, monitoring, and ongoing challenges of their portfolio. Throughout the research we concluded that project awareness should focuses primarily on the following best practices: ANEMORPHOSIS EDU
- 9. Organizational Awareness: A successful awareness framework may include assembling a set of awareness practices, metrics, and appropriate training content that may also increase the research’s impact for the company. Awareness Content: Determining the different roles within an organization is the first step to developing the appropriate type of content and will also help determine the information that should be included in the research. Awareness Checklist: Establishing a checklist may help the organization and researcher when developing, monitoring, and/or maintaining a tool or a method to make the necessary changes prior project competition. As a result of this awareness framework, the university researchers could acquire valuable and precise suggestions from other point of views and perspectives than these of the project manager’s perception. Wolfgang Reinhardt in his article Understanding the meaning of awareness in Research Networks categorizes the term awareness in six different forms. (activity, cultural, social, workplace, location, and knowledge awareness). He also concludes that based on regular meetings and intensive collaborative work, project members are able to develop mutual awareness in multiple aspects, which could hardly be gained by outsiders to the same extent. This awareness often goes beyond the pure project-related issues and spans social, personal, and relational issues; it also strengthens the personal ties between project members and participating affiliations. Initial planning and structuring of the collaborative support is fundamental aspect in partnerships between academy and industry. The internal planning and the associated administrative structures and processes help prevent project and administration misunderstandings which can jeopardize relationships and prevent future collaboration. One other way to accomplish this is to develop an internal support mechanism—a set of support mechanisms—within the organization that recognizes the value of the collaboration and is willing to continue support future projects. Strong and meaningful personal relationships operate as a catalyst for improving knowledge creation and information flows. If this is the case, the parties involved are more willing to invest significant time and effort in building constructive interactions and knowledge sharing frameworks. However, when some team members already know and trust one another, they can become nodes. Looking closely at our data, we discovered that when 45% to 65% of the collaboration team members were already well connected to one another, the team had strong partnership insights. In sum, the most effective industry-academy collaborations are those characterized by a sense of partnership internal support intelligence — where intelligence serves as a common set of tools and practices where managers and researchers are partners or collogues investigating an area or research and propose solutions together. On the other hand, there are managers who are not willing to share their knowledge or spent a significant period of time helping and interacting with researchers. Those kinds of collaborations seemed to produce problematic and poor outcomes than research projects in which project management needs were entirely supported. Insufficient internal support serves as a problematic portfolio management with negative influence on the collaborations. -UNIVERSITY COLLABORATIONS There are many terms used to describe the processes of knowledge sharing. These include knowledge management, knowledge mobilization, knowledge exchange, knowledge transfer, knowledge to action and others. However, network relationships and support effects collaboration dynamics and behaviors within the knowledge network — which in turn influence the research outcomes. ANEMORPHOSIS EDU
- 10. C O L L A B O R A T I O N Differences in approaches to policy requirements and intellectual property rights (IPR) in institutional- industrial research collaborations require considerable discussions within and between the collaborating organizations to be handled successfully. When entering into a sponsored research relationship, both parties should consider any existing related IP that may be owned by either party and how such is being protected (i.e., patents, copyrights, trade secret). This is typically referred to as background intellectual property (BIP). Engage your Technology Transfer Office (TTO) staff if any BIP is to be used. In his Researcher Guidebook, Executive Director, Anthony M. Boccanfuso mentions: Consulting agreements may include contractual obligations regarding IP and copyrights resulting from services provided during the consulting period. The terms should be reviewed by appropriate administrators to make sure that they do not conflict with your institution’s policy on IP. Issues to consider include: The obligation to the institution with the provisions of institutional IP policy taking precedence over consulting arrangements with a third party; The need to maintain a detailed disclosure of discoveries and inventions that are the result of consulting activities and which may have commercial value and/or utility; Adherence to institutional policies/guidelines for the establishment and ownership of inventions, discoveries, and copyrighted materials. According to the code of ethics in Academic Research, both parties, industry and university researchers, should have a holistic approach with regards to the research design regulations, methodology and ethics approvals, equipment use, data management, record keeping, data protection and publication, the appropriate use of licensed research resources and respect for the intellectual property rights of third parties. Some researchers may have come across the concept of Creative Commons licences which allow creators to communicate the rights which they wish to keep and the rights which they wish to waive in order for other people to make re-use of their intellectual properties more straightforward. ANEMORPHOSIS EDU Openness is one of the most important principles of successful collaborations between academies and organizations. It is a necessary ingredient for achieving the goals of a research project and for enabling organization and society to benefit from the outcomes of the investigation conducted. It promotes innovation and value creation while enhance knowledge management. Additionally, openness is important for researchers to evaluate their scientific ethos metrics according to the specified IPR requirements. The true openness brings great opportunities for parties, academia and industry. While openness is considered to be a critical parameter for a research project, information exchange is undoubtedly another key pillar in the ethics of research. However, sharing scientific knowledge is not the common practice. This is because IPR or privacy regulation may serve different purposes, even non-epistemic ones. Conflicts between openness and secrecy may be internal to science or external to science and thus, a negative impact on the collaboration of institutions and industry could be occurred. To deal with these conflicts, the researcher and project manager, together, should precisely define the objectives of the project, the desirable outcomes and the available information that could provide reliable data analysis.
- 11. Research collaboration between academies and companies is not a simple task. There is a plethora of stakeholders and associated mechanisms to be very carefully considered to establish project success and constructive synergistic relationships. Some organizations, however, are well aware of the pragmatic importance of the proposed practices, but somehow they failed to implement them in real life projects. As an indicative paradigm of this observation, at one company, all answers regarding the importance of informal communications and information flows were positive, but the company as a whole never made an effort to manage the information flows and knowledge sharing during their collaboration with a UK institution. The message from this survey goes beyond the main scope of the best practices identification for effective partnerships and alliances between the industry and the academy. What is needed is implementation and follow-up of the suggestions from the bibliography available: longer-term research projects with well-established relationships, dedicated project managers who shares and create values like a real partner or colleague between the university and the company. Stavros Thomas holds a Master Diploma in Wind Engineering from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and a Computer Science Degree from the University of Portsmouth, UK. He currently serves as the Leader of the Anemorphosis Research Group with main scope to improve the applicability of IT tools in wind energy facilities and optimize the Portfolio Management procedures. Anderson Lucas holds a Master diploma in Business Administration and currently serves as a manager at InvestIT, a consulting firm in London, UK, specializing in business innovation. Comment on this article or contact the authors through info@anemorphosis.com ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We really appreciate the trust and encouragement of the staff that participated in this study. They very kindly provided us access to sensitive information concerning their interactions with universities and shared with us critical information with regards to their strategic objectives and their best practices. Some of the companies surveyed have created true win-win collaborations with university partners. We also acknowledge the contributions during the early stages of this study of Maria Beniteth of City University in London, UK. 1. Gray, D., (2004). “Managing the Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers”, The International Intellectual Property Institute, Press Release, February 2, 2004. 2. Mowery, D. (2009). “University-Industry Relationships in the Knowledge-Based Economy: How Useful is the ‘BayhDole Model’?, in van Geenhuizen, et al., pp. 18-41. 3. Orphanides, P., D. Gleitman, N. Formanek, T. Williams, (2007). “Accelerating the Licensing Process for To-BeDeveloped Technologies”, les Nouvelles, XLII (1), (March). 4. R. Reagans and B. McEvily, “Network Structure and Knowledge Transfer: The Effects of Cohesion and Range,” Administrative Science Quarterly 48, no. 2 (2003): 240-267 5. Anthony M. Boccanfuso, A Guide for Successful Institutional-Industrial Collaborations, Georgia Tech Research Corporation | Atlanta, Georgia 30318, 2012 Copyright © Anemorphosis Investigation Group. All rights reserved. 2015 ANEMORPHOSIS EDU