Academic experience key to successful industry collaborations
Who are the industry collaborators with universities? What knowledge networks emerge over time in academic engagement? A new article explores the concept of academic engagement—highlighting the role of individuals with advanced education and university affiliations in fostering long-term partnerships between academia and industry.
Mobility of people matters to promote the production and use of technological knowledge. The concept of ‘academic engagement’ places our attention on the role of individuals as collaborators, and their long-term affiliation with universities.
This new article is authored by Daniel Ljungberg, Maureen McKelvey, and Viktor Ström, all researchers in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, at the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University AvÐÔ°®, and focuses on engineering research collaborations at Chalmers University of Technology between 2009 and 2018. (Characterizing industry collaborators in engineering research: Academic engagement between firms and Chalmers University of Technology, 2009-2018. .
Academic education and work experience in relation to emerging knowledge networks
Because we know less about industry collaborators in research, as compared to academic collaborators, the authors examine academic work experience in terms of both advanced education and work experience at a university, in relation to emerging knowledge networks. Their underlying proposition is that stronger connections to academia, in terms of having a PhD degree and/or university affiliation, indicate high relevant research competence and experience, thereby facilitating more meaningful partnerships for technology.
The researchers introduce a typology of industry collaborators based on their PhD studies and affiliation with the university (see table). Their findings show that 24% of firm co-authors had prior affiliation with the department, contributing to 33% of the co-authored publications. They find that the most common types of industry collaborators involve prior PhD graduates who work in firms as well as currently firm-employed PhD students. Yet, also master’s students who wrote their master’s thesis for the company are often named as industry collaborators. Hence, advanced education appears very important to collaboration with industry, in Swedish engineering industries.
Firms with the most co-authored publications include both large industrial firms like Volvo Cars, Volvo Group, and Ericsson as well as some smaller knowledge-intensive firms like Stri and Heliospectra. Furthermore, academic engagement led to the development of knowledge networks, based on repeated knowledge collaboration over time.
These findings add to the literature on academic engagement with industry by underscoring the importance of individuals with academic work experience, such as prior PhD students, for promoting academic engagement and impact. Particularly notable over time are the frequency of collaborations involving ‘dual affiliated researchers’ – individuals employed by both a firm and the university simultaneously – who are associated with the establishment of dense and long-term knowledge networks.
Typology of industry collaborators
| No affiliation to the department | Prior affiliation to the department | Current affiliation to the department | |
| No PhD degree | Firm researchers without formal PhD training | Former graduate thesis students
| Current graduate thesis students
|
| In PhD training | Firm-employed PhD students at other dept. or university | Current firm-employed PhD students | |
| PhD degree | Firm researchers with formal PhD training | Former (graduated) PhD students and affiliated researchers | Dual affiliated researchers |
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