Systematic Approach Driving toward Effective University-Industry Collaboration (UIC)

Universities are widely perceived as a source of state-of-the-art scientific knowledge and firms opt to work with them to advance their competitive advantages in innovation development. However, collaborations often meet unproductive performance and unsmooth interactions due to gaps in research capability, goals, and working protocols. To reduce the risks of deterioration in collaboration, executives need to foresee possible gaps in advance so that relevant solutions can be planned. This paper introduces the 3-phase analytical approach to manage the university-industry collaboration (UIC). The first phase involves assessing the matching quality of university partners. Next, the assessment result is diagnosed to detect the matching quality gaps. Then, the third phase applies the assessment results to 1.) position university partners into the proper mode of collaboration; Orchestrated collaboration, Assistive collaboration, Attentive collaboration and Mismatched collaboration, according to their complementarities and compatibilities and 2.) craft a strategic roadmap guiding the relationship development toward effective UIC with selected partners. This 3-phase approach helps managers realize possible difficulties and systematically prepare solutions in advance.