Successful industry-university collaboration

While measurement of success in industry-university collaborations has proven elusive, essential elements of an effective collaboration can be identified. These include accurate problem definition, willingness to experiment and risk failure, a shared mission and vision, the retention of each organization's cultural strengths, responsive and sustained support by management, trust between the participants and mutually beneficial outcomes. It is the different perception of 'benefit' by industry and academe ('business value' versus scholarship) that confounds the definition of success. Other confounding issues include ownership of intellectual property, 'unintentional' technology transfer, and the ever present difficulty of effective communication of results (internally and externally). In an environment of shrinking technical assets in industry, changing funding patterns in the university, and a shifting of government science goals from defense to commercial, it is critical to all sectors that these issues are understood and effective strategies for collaboration are established.