Application of Opportunity Lenses

PLEASE NOTE THAT GRAY AREAS REFLECT ARTWORK THAT HAS BEEN INTENTIONALLY REMOVED. THE SUBSTANTIVE CONTENT OF THE ARTICLE APPEARS AS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED.

COLLABORATIONS BETWEEN COMPANIES and universities are critical drivers of the innovation economy. These relationships have long been a mainstay of corporate research and devel-

opment (R&D) — from creating the knowledge foundations for the next generation of solutions, to

serving as an extended “workbench” to solve short-term, incremental problems, to providing a flow of

newly minted talent. As many corporations look to open innovation to augment their internal R&D

efforts, universities have become essential partners. Indeed, companies now look to universities to

anchor an increasingly broad set of innova-

tion activities, especially those grounded in

engaging with regional innovation ecosys-

tems. Silicon Valley, Kendall Square in

Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Block 71 in

Singapore are among the most visible inno-

vation ecosystems where universities are

essential stakeholders in an innovation com-

munity that also includes corporations,

government entities, venture investors, and

entrepreneurs. Thus, in addition to serving

as sources of people and ideas for corpora-

tions, universit y collaborations are an

important mechanism for corporations

seeking to open up new avenues of engage-

ment with a broader innovation ecosystem.

Following corporate giants like General

Electric, Siemens, Rolls-Royce, and IBM,

which have collaborated with universities for

years, a variety of younger companies in-

cluding Amazon, Facebook, Google, and

Uber are using universities as a key part of

Developing Successful Strategic Partnerships With Universities

I N N O VA T I O N

For many companies, universities have become essential innovation partners. However, companies often struggle to establish and run university partnerships effectively. BY LARS FRØLUND, FIONA MURRAY, AND MAX RIEDEL

THE LEADING QUESTION How can companies improve their partner- ships with universities?

FINDINGS �Universities offer a wide and at times bewildering array of modes of engagement.

�Articulate strategic goals for partner- ships and then choose collabora- tion structures that align with those goals.

�Identify key perfor- mance indicators to evaluate the partnerships.

WINTER 2018 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 71

72 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW WINTER 2018 SLOANREVIEW.MIT.EDU

I N N O VA T I O N

their early-stage innovation and new ventures

strategy.1 Even smaller, more regionally oriented

companies in diverse sectors such as mining and au-

tomotive have come to believe that universities are

key ecosystem stakeholders in supporting and shap-

ing their regional economies. For example, IQE plc,

a compound semiconductor company based in

Cardiff, U.K., supports a regional innovation eco-

system through its collaborative relationship with

Cardiff University. The partners have developed a

translational research facility to train scientists and

technicians in compound semiconductor technol-

ogies and support an R&D facility to help U.K.

businesses exploit advances in these technologies.

Such collaborations between corporations and uni-

versities foster the innovation ecosystem.

While the aspirations of university-industry

partnerships can be easily described, many compa-

nies find it challenging to establish and run these

partnerships effectively, even when key financial

resources and human capital are available. The

challenge is amplified in an ecosystem where the

various stakeholders, all with their own ambitions,

need to be properly aligned to achieve impact. In

our research, we have found that both corporations

and universities confront a general level of frustra-

tion and a mismatch in culture and governance

when they collaborate. (See “About the Research.”)

Although many factors contribute to the frus-

tration, the core reason is that university culture —

characterized by high autonomy and distributed

governance — maps poorly to corporate culture.

Universities offer companies a wide and at times

bewildering array of faculty, programs, and other

modes of engagement. Even when the formats for

interaction are established, there is often a pro-

found mismatch in the expectations and goals for

joint engagement.

Given both the promise and the challenge of

university-industry interactions today, it’s impor-

t a n t to ex p l ore t h e f a c tor s t h a t m a ke su ch

collaborations successful. We have found that a sys-

tematic approach to university partnerships within

innovation ecosystems requires both companies

and universities to be well prepared before the en-

gagement even begins. In particular, companies

need to move from an ad hoc to a strategic ap-

proach to partnerships with universities.

From Ad Hoc to Strategic Partnerships In an ad hoc approach, university collaborations are

first and foremost established by individual re-

searchers or engineers in the company and focus on

specific R&D needs identified by those individuals.

This means that collaboration partners are likely

chosen based on personal experience and the net-

works of the researchers and engineers in the

company. The rationale for university partner selec-

tion is familiarity between individual researchers,

not between the two organizations as a whole.

Although this may mean that many potentially valu-

able aspects of a university partnership are ignored,

such approaches create what has been described as

an “extended workbench.”2 Such collaborations,

though small, are often agile. From the perspective

of the corporation, the university collaboration is

limited to the specific project (typically within a

business unit), and thus there is no centralized or-

ganization. From the university’s perspective,

individual researchers and their students gain a

source of funding, insight into relevant problems,

and opportunities to access novel assets or partners.

Ad hoc approaches often lead to a large number

of collaborations (sometimes numbering in the

hundreds) with little synergy. Each agreement is

negotiated individually, which tends to put a heavy

workload on legal departments, leading to delays.

In addition, opportunities for broader engagement

and impact are lost. Consequently, large companies

and many leading universities have shown interest

in more strategic programs.

As companies enter into strategic agreements

with universities, they have begun to organize their

relationships with universities into tiers. “Top-tier”

relationships are no longer simply based on per-

sonal connections between an academic and a

corporate researcher. Increasingly, companies se-

lect universities based on their expertise in an area

of strategic importance and their familiarity to the

company. In fact, companies have started to use

company-wide master research agreements to cre-

ate transparency in their collaboration activities,

improve their negotiating positions, accelerate the

deployment of projects, and encourage interfaculty

collaboration on topics of shared interest. Such

approaches are reminiscent of relationships

ABOUT THE RESEARCH The article draws on the re- sults of a four-year research project, as well as on many years of experience in advising companies and universities on establishing and managing university- industry partnerships in specific regional innovation ecosystems. The research project investigated strate- gic programs for industry- university collaborations with a focus on (1) the de- velopment of specialized units and people for univer- sity relations and their professionalization, (2) the change from an ad hoc approach to a strategic approach to university partnerships, and (3) the corporate success factors for university partnerships. The research was conducted through a qualitative inquiry consisting of participant ob- servation, semi-structured interviews, and workshops. The article also draws on challenges that participants in the MIT Regional Entre- preneurship Acceleration Program have encountered in university-industry partnerships.i

SLOANREVIEW.MIT.EDU WINTER 2018 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 73

established back in the 1980s between Harvard

Medical School and Hoechst A.G., Washington

University and Monsanto, and MIT and Exxon;

and the longstanding relationship between the

University of Oxford and Rolls-Royce.3 More com-

prehensive agreements are particularly attractive to

universities because they enable individuals from

corporate labs to be embedded on-site at the uni-

versity, provide a more stable source of funding,

and allow for more multifaceted interactions.

The change from incremental problem-solving

to shared strategic work on grand challenges or deep

exploration is important because it signals that uni-

versities are places not just to establish an extended

workbench to solve predefined problems but also to

tackle more ambitious challenges that have a more

open-ended, exploratory emphasis.4 Within corpo-

rations, the creation of strategic programs has led to

the institutionalization of specialized units for uni-

versity relations, often situated in the corporate R&D

organization with reporting lines to senior manage-

ment. Such units play a leading role in defining the

focus areas for collaboration, designing formats,

selecting partner universities, offering advice re-

garding intellectual property rights, evaluating

collaborations, and continually managing the

interactions between the company and the univer-

sities. Universities have made fewer organizational

changes, but the development of specific corporate

programs for engagement with particular research

centers, departments, or initiatives has become more

commonplace, and the number of licensing and

contract professionals has grown.

As a next step in the evolution of university part-

nerships, strategic programs are now increasingly

seen as the fulcrum for broader innovation ecosys-

tem engagement (in part because large corporations

are seeking external input throughout the innova-

tion process, from initial idea to impact). Companies

may link to the ecosystem via a range of local entities

(for example, local governments, school systems,

and startup communities). However, particularly

when companies are working with universities ac-

tively engaged in startup creation and research

translation, familiarity with the university and its

collection of innovation activities can become a nat-

ural entry point for companies to develop broader

links into the innovation ecosystem. The shift also

aligns with the ways in which universities today are

participating in local and regional economic devel-

opment and playing a part on a global stage.

Conversely, it would be difficult to imagine innova-

tion ecosystem engagement taking place without a

deep connection to the local university.

Moving from ad hoc to strategic to ecosystem

partnerships places ever more demands on univer-

sity-corporate interactions. On the corporate side,

business units, global R&D, and venturing units all

want seats at the table, with each party bringing its

respective needs and values. On the university side,

individual labs, centers and initiatives, and entre-

preneurship programs all have an interest in the

engagement. Our research is based on our interest

in both understanding and learning how to opti-

mize these naturally complex relationships. As part

of that research, we have found that companies that

work through six important questions are better

positioned to develop an effective approach to

interaction with a range of universities across dif-

ferent innovation ecosystems.

Preparing for Systematic Engagement With Universities We recommend that companies consider these six

fundamental questions:

1. What business goals drive your university

partnerships?

2. What are the key focus areas of your university

partnerships, and how are they selected to ensure

alignment with your business goals?

3. Who are your primary university partners, and

by what criteria are they chosen?

4. What collaboration formats match your focus

areas and business goals?

5. What people, processes, and organizational

structures support your university partnerships?

6. What key performance indicators are most use-

ful for evaluating your university partnerships?

These questions are closely linked; when the

answers are aligned, they provide a logic for engage-

ment that is more strategic and, in our experience,

more likely to be effective. The six questions can be di-

vided into three groups. The first two are about the

business goals — the strategic goals that university

partnerships should deliver for the company. The next

two questions emphasize the partners (who) and

74 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW WINTER 2018 SLOANREVIEW.MIT.EDU

I N N O VA T I O N

collaboration formats (how). Together, the first four

questions form the core of a systematic approach to

university partnerships. The remaining two questions

are about ensuring that the right people, processes, or-

ganizational structures, and evaluation tools are in

place so that the university and the company can ensure

that the partnership is delivering value to both parties.

QUESTION 1: What business goals drive your

university partnerships? Companies have various

reasons for wanting to engage in university partner-

ships, and they often have difficulty articulating their

goals in clear business terms. Working with compa-

nies with emerging best practices in this field, we

found the business goals that drive university inter-

actions can often be grouped into five categories:

Short-Term, Incremental Problem-Solving This often occurs within an existing product line and is,

as already mentioned, sometimes referred to as an

“extended workbench.”

Talent Identification and Hiring For many compa- nies, talent acquisition at levels from undergraduates

to Ph.D.s to postdocs is a primary business goal of

partnerships with universities.

Long-Term Development of New Technologies These interactions are often referred to as “grand

challenges” or “deep exploration,” and they involve

companies seeking new technologies and solutions

to broad-based customer needs that may lead to

new product lines or new businesses.

Systematic Exposure to Startups For many companies, exposure to startups (either research-

or student-driven) while the startups are still part

of the university can be an important incentive for

interacting with universities, often with the in-

volvement of corporate venturing units. Although

there is no agreed-upon term for this, we will refer

to it as exposure to the “startup pipeline.”

Publicity and Political Influence A high-profile partnership with a prestigious university can lend

luster to a company. In some regional innovation

ecosystems, a partnership with a top research insti-

tution can provide access to high-level government

officials.

Although each of these goals is distinct, they

may be interrelated. For example, working collab-

oratively on grand challenges can serve as a pathway

to talent identification and, at times, to a startup (to

move a solution out of the lab and into the world).

Likewise, short-term engagements focused on in-

cremental problem-solving might drive the hiring

of individuals with specific skills needed for the

company’s R&D activities. Addressing this first

question — something few companies do — cre-

ates an opportunity for a corporation to articulate a

cohesive view of its business goals and how they re-

late to its university interactions.

QUESTION 2: What are the key focus areas

of your university partnerships, and how are they

selected to ensure alignment with your business

goals? Within the business goals outlined, a compa-

ny’s key focus areas for university partnerships must

be specified in terms of particular innovation priori-

ties. For a business goal such as talent identification,

for example, the focus areas must be prioritized so

that the “what” can be defined in terms of technical

competence/capability (for example, bioprocess

engineers); challenge areas (for example, new dis-

tributed power systems); or product domains (for

example, more efficient turbine blades). To ensure

that university collaborations are properly aligned

with the company’s business goals, the selection pro-

cess for such partnerships should be as rigorous as a

comparable internal process would be.

For example, a large European automotive com-

pany has an innovation board comprising the heads

of R&D, production, and marketing innovation —

the three divisions most relevant to the business goals

for university partnerships. The board makes deci-

sions on which focus areas should be part of future

projects with universities and monitors ongoing proj-

ects with partner universities. This process ensures

that the focus areas of the current and future projects

with universities are constantly aligned with the busi-

ness goals that drive the university partnerships.

QUESTION 3: Who are your primary university

partners, and by what criteria are they chosen?

Selecting university partners is no easy task. However,

many leading corporations are making their selec-

tion criteria more explicit — in ways that universities

often welcome. The most common criteria include

the following:

SLOANREVIEW.MIT.EDU WINTER 2018 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 75

• Familiarity and fit (previous joint projects, per-

sonal relationships, many hires);

• Location (if proximity, to headquarters or to an

innovation ecosystem, is desirable);

• Excellence (the reputation of the university, top-

journal publications of a lab, or involvement of a

particular researcher);

• Legal framework (especially regarding issues such

as intellectual property rights and access to uni-

versity-based startups); and

• Culture (especially regarding entrepreneurial cul-

ture, openness to industry, and interdisciplinary

collaboration).

Our research indicates that successful companies

continually define and refine their university selec-

tion criteria as their experience grows and their

goals change. One large U.S. corporation, for exam-

ple, has developed an online tool that tracks the

productivity and impact of its university partner-

ships. The tool helps its R&D group make informed

decisions about whom to partner with and ensures

that projects are aligned with business goals of the

company.

QUESTION 4: What collaboration formats

match your focus areas and business goals?

Choosing the right collaboration format is at the

heart of a successful university partnership. While

traditional formats have mainly taken the form of

companies sponsoring research in one or many

projects, the variety of formats has been expanding

in recent years. Among the formats we see today

are contract research with a single lab, individual

corporate employees embedded in a lab or re-

sea rch center, cons or t ia m em b ers h ip, lar ge

co-created research centers, open calls for grant

proposals in a particular research area, student/

corporate hackathons and idea contests, collabo-

ration on publicly funded projects, fellowship

programs, and jointly sponsored conferences and

workshops. (See “A Variety of Industry-University

Collaboration Formats.”)

More novel and ambitious formats include the

Cisco-University of British Columbia relationship,

which aims to turn the university campus into a

living lab for smart building systems,5 and the

Global Innovation Exchange, funded initially by

Microsoft and established in collaboration with

Tsinghua University in Beijing and the University

of Washington in Seattle, which provides a com-

pelling example of more complex but increasingly

relevant multiparty, multicontinent relationships.6

Of course, the collaboration format a company

chooses will depend on the goals it wishes to pursue.

For companies prioritizing short-term, incremental

problem-solving, contract research with a single lab

may be the best way to seamlessly extend the

workbench. If the goal is talent acquisition, student-

oriented activities such as hackathons, competitions,

and fellowships are highly effective in that they en-

able the company to get to know a large number of

talented students and evaluate their fit. Embedding

employees within the university is a particularly ef-

fective way to identify talent, particularly at the Ph.D.

and postdoctoral level. To meet grand challenges,

several formats are emerging as best practices: tar-

geted but open calls for research proposals (perhaps

preceded by a hackathon to raise awareness and ex-

citement) and the co-creation of research centers.

The opportunity to engage with the startup

pipeline has emerged as another attractive business

goal for university partnerships. Here again, there

are various potential formats, all geared toward

identifying and connecting to startups or even

A VARIETY OF INDUSTRY-UNIVERSITY COLLABORATION FORMATS Contract research with a single lab is one of the most common forms of industry-university collaboration, but there are many other collaboration formats as well. Here is a sampling, with an example of each format.

FORMAT EXAMPLE

Embedded individuals

MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratories, which encourage corporate researchers to work in a specific on-campus lab

Consortia membership

University of Cambridge Institute for Manufacturing corporate membership program

Co-created research centers

MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab

Focused calls for research proposals

Amazon Catalyst research grants initiated and piloted with the University of Washington

Student hackathons

MIT hackathon with the Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA) and the U.S. Department of Defense

Student competitions

The Siemens Global University Challenge

Collaboration on publicly funded research

Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) proposals

76 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW WINTER 2018 SLOANREVIEW.MIT.EDU

I N N O VA T I O N

project teams that have yet to formally incorporate

(which we refer to as “proto-startups”). Many

proto-startups are associated with innovation and

entrepreneurship programs in universities and in

the wider innovation ecosystem. We found in our

research that successful companies draw a distinc-

tion between engaging with student-led startups

(for example, via business plan competitions or stu-

dent accelerators) and lab-based startups, where

interaction typically includes consideration of in-

tellectual property, engagement with faculty, and

sharing of expertise around scale-up and testing,

along with sponsored research.

Companies that have expansive goals need to

actively manage a complex portfolio of relation-

ships and formats. The university-relations unit at

one large pharmaceutical company, for example,

continually evaluates and prioritizes its collabora-

tion formats based on the evolving business needs

and phases in the drug development process. The

company uses fellowship programs to fund Ph.D.s

and postdoctoral researchers and provide opportu-

nities to bring them into the organization, both to

drive know-how about grand challenges and for

talent acquisition.

Ultimately, successful partnering with universi-

ties isn’t about choosing a particular collaboration

format but about systematically prioritizing and

reprioritizing different formats in response to

changing business goals. Beyond that, it is about

having the right people, processes, and organiza-

tional support to ensure success and to identify and

manage sources of tension. In our last two ques-

tions, we will examine these issues.

QUESTION 5: What people, processes, and or-

ganizational structures support your university

partnerships? Corporations with partnerships

across a range of universities must create internal

structures and processes to drive success. This raises

questions about what structures will enable effec-

tive interactions, what competencies university-

relationship managers need, and what processes are

best suited to support internal alignment between

the technical expert level and the management level

in the company and also between the company and

the university.

In terms of structure, the shift from an ad hoc

approach to a strategic approach has spawned

specialized units for university relations. But what

are the best organizational structures to support

the partnerships? If it makes sense for companies

to establish units for university relations, should

they be part of a centralized R&D function or op-

erate as part of more decentralized business units?

Our findings show that strategic partnerships do

not have to be supported by a centralized unit that

reports to the chief technical officer (CTO) or a se-

nior vice president. Rather, it’s important that the

primary business goals (and the particular choice

of who, where, and how) shape the choices. If the

problems you are trying to solve have been defined

at the business-unit level, then partnership sup-

port should take place within the business units

themselves. If the goal is to undertake something

larger (for example, a grand challenge), then it

makes sense for the university-relations unit to be

centralized and to report to a senior manager such

as the CTO.7

Regardless of organizational setup, company

employees who serve at the university-corporate

interface must be capable of acting as knowledge

brokers between university partners and the com-

pany. We suggest that companies designate two

roles for each university partner: a management

sponsor (usually a top manager such as a board

member or country CEO), who is assigned to a

specific university; and a university-relationship

manager for R&D, who supports the sponsor

within the company.

Based on our experience, it works well if the uni-

versity likewise appoints people to mirror those two

corporate roles (ideally, a vice president or dean and

an industry-partnership manager). On the corpo-

rate side, the core team drives the processes that are

covered by our six questions. Of course, when con-

sidering the portfolio of university partnerships, the

top executives and key managers involved with the

relationships need to take part in the conversations

and have an overview of the company’s engagement

in various innovation ecosystems. But as noted

above, the overall reporting structure needs to reflect

the goals of the relationships. Beyond the internal

organizational decisions, the corporate team and its

university counterparts should explicitly address

our six questions and use them to build a shared un-

derstanding of success.

SLOANREVIEW.MIT.EDU WINTER 2018 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 77

QUESTION 6: What key performance indica-

tors are most useful for evaluating your university

partnerships? Evaluation is a critical element of an

effective university-industry engagement. But as

with any essential activity, the metrics of success

must be carefully defined to ensure that what’s

measured and tracked is closely aligned with the

business goals. Both the key performance indica-

tors (KPIs) you choose and the evaluation process

are fundamental to ongoing effectiveness.

Some of the most commonly used KPIs for uni-

versity partnerships are cash investment, number of

joint projects initiated per year, number of students

hired, number of patents or licensing agreements,

amount of public funding leveraged, effectiveness

and efficiency of projects, number of faculty mem-

bers and students involved in projects per year,

number of ideas that turn into product develop-

ment, and number of investments in startups. Our

research suggests that successful companies tend to

use a variety of KPIs (both quantitative and qualita-

tive), and they define and redefine them periodically

in terms of how they fit with the business goals and

the collaboration formats.

• If the goal is incremental problem-solving, then

the KPIs should prioritize the effectiveness, time-

liness, and efficiency of the researcher, group, or

lab in delivering a solution.

• For talent identification and hiring goals, the metrics

might include number of applicants for key roles,

successful hiring ratios, retention, and, over time, the

hires’ performance within the corporation.

• For grand challenges, the KPIs might include the

number of proposals submitted, the diversity of the

proposals, the number of faculty engaged, the extent

to which external funding is leveraged, and, later, the

effectiveness and breadth of the solutions developed.

• For goals involving access to the startup pipeline,

the KPIs might include the number of new startups

coming out of the university in fields of interest to

ASSESSING PARTNERSHIPS WITH UNIVERSITIES We have created this form, which we call the “university partnership canvas,” to allow business executives to address six key questions about their university partnerships visually. Working through these six questions can help companies develop a strategic perspective on their partnerships, thus setting up both companies and universities for more effective interactions. Note: This form is available for download as part of the online version of this article, which can be found at http://sloanreview.mit.edu/x/59205.

FOCUS AREAS What are the key focus areas of your university partnership, and how are they selected to ensure alignment with your business goals?

PARTNERS Who are your primary university partners, and by what criteria are they chosen?

GOALS What business goals drive your university partnerships?

FORMATS What collaboration formats match your focus areas and business goals?

PEOPLE, PROCESSES, AND ORGANIZATION What people, processes, and organizational structures support your university partnerships?

EVALUATION What key performance indicators are most useful for evaluating your university partnerships?

UNIVERSITY PARTNERSHIP CANVAS Created for: Created by:

Designed and developed by Lars Frølund, Max Riedel, and Fiona Murray

Date: Version:

2

3 1 4

5 6

78 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW WINTER 2018 SLOANREVIEW.MIT.EDU

I N N O VA T I O N

the company, and the number and amount of the

company’s investments in such startups.

• Finally, if the goal is publicity and political influ-

ence, then the number of high-level meetings,

media mentions, and the level of satisfaction on the

media relations team are among the relevant KPIs.

As we have outlined, working through the six

questions can help companies develop a strategic per-

spective on their partnerships, thus setting up both

companies and universities for more effective interac-

tions and more successful ecosystem engagement. To

implement the process, we have created a form we call

the “university partnership canvas,”8 which allows ex-

ecutives to represent the six questions visually. (See

“Assessing Partnerships With Universities,” p. 77.)

The University Partnership Canvas As we have noted, many companies have recently

shifted their focus in university and innovation

ecosystem engagement from incremental problem-

solv ing toward long-ter m de velopment and

systematic exposure to new startups. In doing so,

however, our research shows that companies have

not always done enough to reconfigure the other

elements of their engagement approach.

In such instances, the university partnership can-

vas offers a tool to systematically help executives assess

their existing approaches and identify inconsistencies

between their business goals and, for example, the

structure of their existing partnerships. Against this

background, the canvas can help executives define

possible solutions to overcome any mismatches or

tensions. They can also use the canvas to explore the

impact of changing business goals on their existing

university partnerships and, against this background,

make timely decisions on what to change.

A technology company used the canvas to assess a

strategic university partnership program that had

been under way for more than five years, the primary

business goal of which was to drive the development

of new product lines or new businesses. As a first step

in the assessment, we asked the people responsible

for university relations globally to fill out the canvas,

answering the questions one by one and inserting

red lines and/or remarks when they found mis-

matches or tensions — in other words, when their

answers to the six questions didn’t reinforce each

other. (See “Additional Resources.”)

The assessment highlighted four mismatches

and tensions:

Format Selection In spite of the business goal of driving long-term development of new product

lines or new businesses, the company’s preferred

collaboration format was contract research.

Contract research is a good match for short-term,

incremental problem-solving but not for driving

long-term development of new business lines.

Focus Areas The company had no central process for selecting focus areas that were aligned to its

innovation priorities. Instead, the focus areas

were selected at the business-unit level, which led

to narrowly scoped projects that weren’t aligned

with primary business goals.

Partnership Selection Although the company was focused on long-term development of new

product lines or new businesses, it gave low priority

to “entrepreneurial culture” in its criteria for select-

ing university partners.

Partnership Evaluation The company did not have a KPI that was useful for evaluating the impact

of projects in the partnership and the creation of

new product lines or new businesses.

We then asked the university-relations managers

from the company to come up with tentative solu-

tions to address the mismatches and tensions, and

to write the solutions on the canvas. They priori-

tized sponsored research and hackathons, with the

expectation that hackathons could inform new

projects that could lead to new business creation.

As for selection criteria, they decided to still give

the top priority to “familiarity” but also decided to

give “entrepreneurial culture” a higher priority

than “scientific excellence.” In selecting focus areas,

university-relations staff wanted to create a central-

ized call for proposals (funded, if possible, by the

CTO) as a way to drive more sponsored research

projects and hackathons within areas they thought

would impact several business units. Finally, they

decided to create a KPI measuring the number of

new product lines or new businesses based on joint

research projects.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES �To download a copy of the university partner- ship canvas form or view examples of completed forms, visit the online version of this article at http://sloanreview.mit .edu/x/59205.

SLOANREVIEW.MIT.EDU WINTER 2018 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 79

In another example, a global technology company

wanted to reprioritize its business goals from primar-

ily short-term, incremental problem-solving toward a

focus on systematic exposure to new business ideas

and research-based startups, talent acquisition, and

long-term development of new business lines. The

company first assessed its current approach to uni-

versity partnerships by using the canvas. It then

inserted the reprioritized business goals and against

this background worked through the rest of the

questions to explore the impact of the revised goals

on its approach to university partnerships.

When working through the questions on the can-

vas, the company realized that the change in business

goals had a profound impact on its approach to uni-

versity partnerships. Executives saw that they would

need to (1) set up internal processes to make sure

that the focus areas for university partnerships are

aligned to the overall R&D priorities of the com-

pany, (2) apply resources to startup scouting and

hackathons, (3) expand their set of knowledge

brokers embedded in their preferred regional inno-

vation ecosystems, and (4) develop KPIs that

measure investments in startups and the number of

ideas (from sources such as hackathons) that lead to

the development of new product lines.

Unlocking More Value Partnering with universities in innovation ecosystems

can be challenging, but the university partnership

canvas can help companies develop a systematic

approach to their interaction with universities, thus

enabling both parties to unlock more value and

pursue a more strategic approach for ecosystem en-

gagement. In our view, companies shouldn’t use the

canvas just as an internal tool for assessing and devel-

oping their approach to university partnerships. They

should also use it in their ongoing dialogues with uni-

versities. In this way, the canvas can be a tool that

corporations and universities use together to create

transparency about the goals, formats, KPIs, and or-

ganizational structures of the partnerships under

consideration for further development.

Lars Frølund (@LarsFrolund) is a visiting fellow at the MIT Innovation Initiative. Fiona Murray (@ Fiona_MIT) is the William Porter Professor of Entre- preneurship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and codirector of the MIT Innovation Initiative.

Max Riedel is a consultant on university relations for Siemens AG in Munich, Germany. Comment on this article at http://sloanreview.mit.edu/x/59205.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank the following people for giving us insights into university relations and for many productive discussions (presented alphabetically by affiliation name): John Westensee and Anette Miltoft from Aarhus Univer- sity; Louise Leong and Joe de Sousa from AstraZeneca; Nicole Eichmeier and Mirjam Storim from BMW; Ciro Acedo Boria, Alberto Lopez-Oleaga, and Manuel Martines Alonso from Ferrovial; Michel Benard from Google; Ales- sandro Curioni and Chris Sciacca from IBM; Karsten Keller from Nitto Avecia; Søren Bregenholt and Uli Stilz from Novo Nordisk; Kate Barnard and Mark Jefferies from Rolls-Royce; Rajiv Dhawan from Samsung; Najib Abusalbi from Schlumberger; and Natascha Eckert from Siemens. Finally, we would like to thank the participants in the semi- nar “Success Factors for University Partnerships,” who tested our university partnership canvas and gave us very valuable feedback.

REFERENCES

1. An example of the partnerships is the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. See http://mitibmwatsonailab.mit.edu/.

2. M. Perkmann and A. Salter, “How to Create Productive Partnerships With Universities,” MIT Sloan Management Review 53, no. 4 (summer 2012): 79-88.

3. D.E. Sanger, “Corporate Links Worry Scholars,” New York Times, Oct. 17, 1982, www.nytimes.com; and University of Oxford Department of Engineering Science, “Celebrating 25th Anniversary of the Rolls- Royce University Technology Centre in Solid Mechanics,” n.d., www.eng.ox.ac.uk.

4. Perkmann and Salter, “How to Create Productive Partnerships.”

5. “The University of British Columbia and Cisco Collaborate on Smart+ Connected Buildings and Smart Energy,” press release, May 27, 2013, https://newsroom.cisco.com.

6. E. Redden, “From Beijing to Puget Sound,” Inside Higher Ed, June 19, 2015, www.insidehighered.com.

7. Siemens, for example, has created an organization of internal and university-based relationship managers to run their strategic programs (Centers of Knowledge Inter- change, or CKI) with universities. For an example of a CKI university and some activities of the program, see http:// cki.rwth-aachen.de/en. More information is available at www.siemens.com.

8. The “university partnership canvas” is inspired by the “business model canvas” developed by A. Osterwalder and Y. Pigneur in their book “Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Chal- lengers” (New York: Wiley, 2010).

i. See http://reap.mit.edu.

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