Creating Innovators; A case study on University-Industry Collaboration

Abstract: The ever accelerating technological and societal development require firms to become more innovative to keep up with competition. Increasingly, companies engage in external innovation networks to gain insights and support through partnerships, and a part of this development is that industry engage in partnerships and collaborations with university. One group within university that possess a tremendous innovative power are graduate students, and they are not being offered enough opportunities to connect with external partners. Both students and industry could gain several benefits from closer collaborations but this is still a rather underdeveloped area. Research in this area has been focused on collaborations on a more advanced and institutional level of collaboration so the purpose of this thesis has therefore been to examine how students and industry can collaborate and what value this can generate. The research has been conducted through a qualitative multiple case study on multidisciplinary collaboration models, in combination with a brief quantitative pilot study. Findings indicate that the value participants can get out of collaborations depends on their commitment to the process. Industry can contribute as sponsors and provide students with all the benefits of solving real problems in action oriented environments, but firms stand more to gain if they were to participate on equal terms as students. However, close collaborations are hindered by misalignments between corporate and academic culture, and a lacking understanding for the potential value that can be achieved.