Demystifying industry-academia collaboration
How to manage collaboration between industry and academia? The ETH Chair of Strategic Management and Innovation carried out a study with Novartis to investigate this question. Prof. Georg von Krogh (ETH Zurich) and Dr. Hans Widmer (Novartis) give insight into the surprising results.
Prof. von Krogh, why do you investigate industry-academia collaboration?
Prof. von Krogh: This is part of a long-term research focus at our chair. We have found that companies that open up to external sources of ideas and knowledge during their innovation activities financially outperform (share of revenues from new products) those companies that remain closed. One of the most important external sources of research, knowledge, and technology in innovation are universities. But how to structure and manage the research relationship between universities and companies best? We still know relatively little about that question, which drove our interest in conducting this study.
What is special about your recent study with Novartis?
Prof. von Krogh: To our knowledge, this is the largest and most systematic research study of its kind. It embraces Novartis' collaboration projects in drug discovery and surveys researchers who are globally working both at the company as well as at universities and research institutes. Moreover, we have a separate instrument for measuring the success of collaboration projects that makes us quite confident that the study offers valuable insights.
Dr. Widmer, why did you participate in this study?
Dr. Widmer: Our goal at Novartis is to develop truly novel medicines for unmet medical needs. Collaborations with academia are one crucial step on this journey. Therefore, we wanted to find out what makes industry-academia collaboration successful. Instead of relying on anecdotes, we wanted to conduct a systematic study, representing our collaboration with universities and hospitals worldwide. Furthermore, Prof. Georg von Krogh brought his expertise, impartiality and scientific rigor to conducting the study.
Prof. von Krogh, what is your advice to companies that want to collaborate with academia?
Prof. von Krogh: We began the study with the assumptions that university- and company-based researchers would differ in their goals and working culture. Not so! The largest challenges to a successful collaboration pertain to resource constraints, legal and administrative complexity, and coordination challenges. The good news is that all of these challenges are manageable. Thus companies that want to collaborate with universities may:
- Assess and plan resource needs throughout the full life span of the project.
- Pay up-front attention to legal issues. Simplify legal constraints, and if possible use framework agreements to govern the collaboration.
- Put mechanisms in place to coordinate scientific work between the company and its academic partners. This means to discuss and lay out roles, tasks and interdependencies between these, as the project unfolds.
Dr. Widmer, what was the most surprising result from your point of view?
Dr. Widmer: The responses from industrial and academic scientists are remarkably consistent: The coordination among the project team members has the strongest influence on success. The coordination challenge can be effectively managed by collaborating team members themselves, by adopting project leadership practices that are equally relevant for academic and industrial scientists. This is an important finding because anecdotally we would expect fundamental issues, such as differing missions of collaborating parties, to be a major challenge.
How do you implement the results?
Dr. Widmer: Drawing attention to the challenges identified is the first step towards sustainable improvement. Or in fact, consciously fostering open and frequent communication helps preventing problems before they even occur. Expectations of the collaborators, technical challenges, timelines etc. should be addressed regularly. That said, choosing the collaboration carefully and resourcing them appropriately will help to be recognized as a trusted leader in science and collaborator of choice.
Contact / Links:
Publication of project results in external page Nature Reviews, Drug Discovery
ETH Chair of Strategic Management and Innovation, Prof. Georg von Krogh
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