Practises in R and D

Stavros P. Thomas and Anderson A. Lucas

C O L L A B O R A T I O N

Strengthening Industry-University Collaboration Universities 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

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

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

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

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.

3 Time 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.

5 Technology

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,

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

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

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

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.

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

[email protected]

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.

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