Insights from the UK and USA on building strategic university-industry partnerships
The workshop brought together senior thought-leaders from leading UK and US universities, their counterparts from major research-intensive multinational firms, as well as representatives from government funding agencies.
Opening the workshop, the Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, set the 70+ delegates the challenge of identifying key practices for developing strategic partnerships that delivered lasting value and were sustainable.
The workshop then explored a number of themes, including the value (and potential downsides) of strategic partnerships; how to initiate and grow them; how to nurture them to realise value; and how to deal with change.
The participants – from university, industry and government, from the US and the UK – revealed important differences (and similarities) across organisations, sectors and countries; and identified key effective practices and guiding principles for developing strategic partnerships.
These lessons and insights will be captured in a workshop report to be disseminated in summer 2014.
The workshop on 3-4 March was organised by Tomas Coates Ulrichsen and Eoin O’Sullivan at CSTI in partnership with PraxisUnico, the University-Industry Demonstration Partnership (UIDP), and UK Government’s Science & Innovation Network.
