Having grown up in a variety of domestic and international business environments, I continue to struggle with the difficulty some universities – and I stress some universities – have in adopting an industry partnering culture. There seems to be well entrenched perceptions that partnering with industry diminishes the quality of research or unduly influences the investigational research process. I am sure there are historic examples of where this existed, but it should not be considered a rational for avoiding future partnering.
Building a partnering culture rests first and foremost with university leadership. Partnering with industry needs to be a strategic growth goal of the university. Universities who have a high performance industry partnering system reinforce it with a supportive culture championed by university leadership which creates positive perception, awareness, and aligned research opportunities delivering real value to the university. Value comes in different forms and can be measured in new industry sponsored research projects, student experiential opportunities and targeted philanthropy.
Experience suggests that we can build a positive partnering culture by engaging research faculty with their industry counterparts to find areas of common interest leading to new collaborative research projects. I don’t want to oversimplify the challenge of building a partnering culture, but sometimes single research projects create the environment on which to build a sustainable industry partnering culture.