MIT Sloan Management Review

FIVE THINGS THAT DON’T AFFECT A COLLABORATION’S IMPACT Several factors widely thought to be important to industry-university collaborations in fact had little effect on the projects’ business impact.

1Presence of an executive “champion.” Although a powerful ally in the executive suite can help obtain support for a project, we did not find a correlation between the existence of such a champion and project impact. To deliver value, the key is whether the project addresses a real need, as perceived by working engineers in the company (see Practice 1).

2Geographic proximity. Companies scouted for collaborators worldwide and were able to bridge geographic distance through visits, personnel exchanges and student internships. The important factor is not proximity but personal interaction between the academic research team and the company (see Practice 5).

3Overall project cost. The time frame of the project, not the amount of funding, is important (see Practice 4).

4Type of research: basic, applied or advanced development. There was no statistically significant difference in terms of impact between projects with different missions. What is important is that the projects address a tangible need for the company (see Practice 1).

5Location of project manager. We found no evidence that the location of the project manager, whether at a central laboratory or a business unit, affects project impact. What is important is that the project manager is able to span these organizational barriers (see Practice 2).

leadership. Further, when company personnel work on areas linked to the university project, the knowledge flows connected with the collaboration are heightened, providing additional pathways for uptake of the results. These additional linkages broaden and diversify the communications channels that are key to maintaining project alignment, and in some cases even can enable a realignment of the research goals with changing company strategy. Although having a company executive as a champion for the project can be helpful in terms of support, 2 we found no evidence that this could substitute 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 point is illustrated by the history of a collaboration sponsored by an engine manufacturer. The partnership arose from a suggestion by a member of the board of directors who thought it would be useful to have a strong connection to a university laboratory with a major research presence in the field. Other senior management agreed and provided funds for a project proposed by the head of the laboratory. The company supported the project for six years, some of the work was done using company product hardware and the project produced several publications. From the university perspective, the project was challenging and the results were instructive and useful, leading to better understanding of how the devices being studied behaved. No one at the working level or first level of management, however, saw a clear link to problems the company was having or to constraints on their design processes. They took no ownership of the project and paid little attention to its results, despite the strong desire of the university group to be useful.

Practice 2: Select Boundary-Spanning Project Managers In every organization, there are certain individuals who naturally engage in networking activities, maintaining relationships that cross organizational lines. These “boundary spanners” are the main conduits by which knowledge is acquired from external sources and disseminated inside the organization, 3 and they play an essential role in how any organization

benefits from and adapts to its environment. Companies dependent on new technology rely on a particular type of boundary spanner — the technical boundary spanner — to capture and use this technology successfully. Effective technical boundary spanners, whether as a result of personality or training, recognize their responsibility to facilitate knowledge exchange with both the university research group and within their company. They are key to turning collaboration research outcomes into company impacts.

Boundary spanners contribute to the success of industry-university collaboration in two primary ways. First, they effect a broad dissemination of the research results inside the company. That is especially true for introducing the findings to individuals beyond the research community who have responsibility for development, manufacturing and other functions. Second, they provide feedback to the university researchers through information they bring back from the company’s technical community, a mechanism for keeping the research aligned with the company’s needs, as described in Practice 1.

One example of boundary spanning was in a collaboration between a university and a robotics company. The company project manager was located in an R&D division and the university project was seen as basic research, years away from producing anything that would affect a company product. However, the project manager made it a point to visit individuals in the company’s manufacturing operations. These interactions in turn led to ideas about how the next generation of robotics might be evolved into tools and integrated into the manufacturing process. They also provided information on the best direction for the project to proceed — in this case, a direction the project manager would not other wise have considered. For this project, the outcomes may have been interesting without the project manager’s actions: The researchers were bright, the topic had a high profile and anything the collaboration produced might have sparked attention. Without the cross-boundary discussions, however, it is unlikely that the project results would have been adopted as part of a manufacturing process with potential for major impact on the company.