تعامل موثر دانشگاه - صنعت: یک ارزیابی چند موردی از پروژه های "تحقیق و توسعه" مشارکتی

There is a growing world-wide trend toward greater collaboration between academia and industry, an activity encouraged by governments as a means of enhancing national competitiveness and wealth creation. Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) is well known for its extensive links with industry, and provided an excellent opportunity for a study of management practice within university–industry collaborative research projects. This paper evaluates the findings of six collaborative research projects. The objective was to identify factors which, if managed correctly, increase the probability of a collaboration being perceived as successful by both academic and industrial partners. The outcome was a good practice model for successful university–industry research collaborations.

Against a background of increasing international competition and rapid technological change, governments are actively encouraging collaboration as a means of improving innovation efficiency and thereby enhancing wealth creation. Collaboration provides companies with the means by which to advance technologically, at lower cost and with less inherent risk. Collaboration also provides access to a greater breadth and depth of knowledge and technologies than would normally be possible through internal development. For universities the benefits include additional public and private funding, and increasingly, licensing and patenting income, as a result of technology transfer activities. However, these considerable potential benefits are often not realised in practice. The major reason is that collaborations between, often diverse, organisations, need considerable management effort in order to be successful (Dodgson, 1991). Given the substantial investment (both public and private) currently being made in collaborative research activities, it is clearly important to ensure that collaborations are managed effectively, and the benefit achieved maximised.

This research has examined and discussed the main issues and important success factors to emerge from both the published literature and evidence drawn from six case studies, each examples of university-industry interaction on R&D projects. Among the many important issues raised by this research, some common themes emerged, indicating that a standardised good practice model for the effective management of collaborations would provide a useful management tool which could be applied to future collaborative research projects, as a means of systematically improving collaboration management practice and thereby improving the probability of collaboration success. The good practice model presented as a result of this research is based on six key areas, representing the major common themes to emerge from the multi-case study and the published literature: • The need to evaluate new partners and build a collaborative environment which takes into account any key issues identified. • Good project management is essential to success, and particular emphasis should be given to structured objective setting, good progress monitoring, effective communication and deploying only trained, high quality project managers to run the collaboration. • A tendency for collaborations to be influenced by external factors such as corporate instability, indicates that the management processes themselves need to be flexible enough to cope with change. • The importance of trust, commitment and continuity was reinforced by this research. Further, important insights were gained into preparing the ground for successful collaboration. • Effective management of university–industry interactions must include measures which will help maintain the interest and commitment of the industrial partners. These include attention to proprietary benefit, ensuring benefit at least commensurate with investment, and planning for the achievement of tangible outcomes early in the project. • Good university–industry relations require that an appropriate balance be achieved between academic objectives and industrial priorities.