Transcript NSF Science & Technology Center

Cooperation between
industry and university
Harm-Jan Steenhuis
Eastern Washington University
OAG panel presentation, POMS, April 29 2006, Chicago
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Content
• Some information on I-U partnerships
• Cooperation
• Cooperation in OM / challenges
• Conclusion
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The OAG-survey and findings
• The survey provides a lot of insight
into what industry is looking for.
• This provides ideas for academia, i.e.
what are good topics for research
… which enables a better connection with
industry
• This is the what. This presentation is
more about the why and how.
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Introduction – IU partnerships
• There are many benefits for industry and
university to cooperate (Tripsas et al., 1995;
Mowery, 1998;)
• Universities contribute significantly to US
industrial innovations (Mansfield and Lee,
1996)
• Research partnerships between industry
and university are seen as a critical strategic
response to global competition (Hall et al.,
2001)
• At least 1200 industry-university cooperative
research centers existed in the US in the
mid-1990s (Cohen et al., 1994).
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Introduction – IU partnerships
• There are at least two different types of
cooperation:
– The type where industry and university cooperate on
essentially basic research, for example in centers.
» As an example, think of the International Motor Vehicle Program
(MIT) that led to insights on lean manufacturing etc.
– The type where industry ‘hires’ academia to provide
input on a particular project, more like consulting or
applied research.
» As an example, think of a particular company that wants to
move towards lean manufacturing and asks faculty to help with
this change
• Some of the issues for these different types of
cooperation are the same. Some may have
different consequences
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Introduction – IU partnerships
Companies that work with universities can be categorized in
three groups based on their objectives (Santoro and
Chakrabarti, 2001):
• Collegial players (22% of firms)
–
–
–
–
lower levels of interaction and commitment
generate lower levels of tangible outcomes
more network-oriented
predominantly large firms
• Aggressive players (46% of firms)
– highest level of interactions and commitments
– generate highest level of tangible outcomes
– equal mix of large and small firms (large are more network oriented)
• Targeted players (32% of firms)
– high levels of interaction and resource commitments
– Smaller firms, with short time-horizon.
– more problem-oriented
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Cooperation – basic research
• In general, there is a great incentive to have
basic research conducted at universities
– Avoids industry duplication
– Uses cheaper labor
– Some of the cost savings we identified were an
average of $192,545 per project
• Another major reason for industry to
participate: access to students (helps with
recruitment)
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Cooperation – basic research
• Industry side: for IUCRCs, member retention seems to be
predicted by:
– Professional networking
– Satisfaction with research relevance
– Satisfaction with administrative operations
• Academia side (7% of university R&D is sponsored by
industry)
– Working with industry does not negatively affect student experiences or
outcomes
– Most striking differences were found between sponsored projects
(typically guided by senior faculty) and projects with no external
sponsor (typically guided by junior faculty).
– Some issues with academic freedom, e.g. patents, timing of publication
• Faculty satisfaction and commitment
– Some extrinsic rewards such as funding, support for students,
leadership
– More importantly, intrinsic rewards such as interesting and rewarding
work
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Cooperation – applied/consulting
• Use of experts
• Use of analytical ‘power’
• Cheaper, in particular if students can
be used.
• Consultancy projects with students can
be more beneficial than internships due
to a ‘tighter’ guidance by faculty
• A number of these were confirmed in
the OAG survey
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Industry-university and OM
• Looking at OM
– POM executives and POM academia are
dealing with the same topic area.
–In the knowledge economy, universities
can make important contributors to
knowledge (whether basic or applied)
– which can help industry
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Challenges (1)
• There are deterrents that involve
emotional and cultural rather than
economic issues (Mueller, 1985)
– Industry more short-term and commercial
oriented than universities
– Industry typically publishes fewer articles
than universities do and typically only after a
product has been introduced
– In industry, funding is typically on an annual
basis and R&D funding is typically linked to
sales  contracts for a year
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Challenges (2)
• Type of cooperation
– For example, looking at basic research
(in a center approach)
– or looking at applied research (in a
consultancy approach)
– The OAG survey seems to indicate
that much of the cooperation has been
consultancy oriented (clear goals,
timing)
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Challenges (3)
• Timing of cooperation
– Industry is, in particular for consultancy
oriented project, looking for specific
deliverables at a specific point in time.
– Universities work with semesters or quarters.
– For basic research, academia generally
move slow.
– Timing is related to for example intellectual
property rights and publishing
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Challenges (4)
• “Suitability” of topic
– “The models offered by academics did little to
provide pragmatic answers for these multiple
trade-off situations” (Andrew and Johnson, 1982)
–“Operations Management is still being equated
with management science/operations research. It
seems that this close relationship to theoretically
based quantitative modeling has gotten us into
trouble with the practitioners in our field” (Saladin,
1985)
– “If we do not expand our approaches to
research, managers will continue to perceive us
as irrelevant academics who address fictitious
problems and are not interested in the real world”
(Meredith et al., 1989)
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Challenges (5)
• “Suitability” of topic has everything to do
with methodologies and publishing
– “No apparent shift away from modeling
solution methods nor any significant shift
toward empirical methodologies”
(Pannirselvam et al., 1999)
– Highly ranked OM journals (by academics) are
still very much oriented on OR and MS. See
e.g. (Barman et al., 1991; Vokurka, 1996;
Barman et al., 2001)
– OAG survey responses indicate that many of
these academically ranked journals are not
read by industry
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Challenges (6)
• Industry acceptance of academic knowledge?
– There are different methodologies that can be
applied. For example the Design methodology
(van Aken) is specifically aimed at consulting
projects
– There is the issue of general vs specific
knowledge. Company officials are experts on
their company and academics are not. However,
academia can add more general knowledge. For
example, is lean even appropriate for this
company?
• Note that OAG (US) respondents ranked
academic resources lowest for who will work
on their problems
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Challenges (7)
• Geography
– Relationships between industry and
universities are often based on the
location
– A ‘trust’ needs to be established.
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Conclusion
• There are many benefits for industryuniversity cooperation.
• There are many different types of
cooperation with different goals etc.
• Overall, there are a number of
challenges to overcome.
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