New ways of cooperation between academia and industry

Cooperation between academia and industry has always been a touchy issue – hailed and supported by some, but seen with scepticism or even despised by others. Perceptions have changed as has the basis of such collaborations. The past years have brought fusion waves in the pharmaceutical industry reducing the number of potential industrial partners, a rise and subsequent decline in financing for start-up companies, and an increasing assertiveness in the universities’ approach to collaborations.

In the past, such collaborations have often been asymmetric – either exploiting academic institutions in specific little projects, or favouring academic institutions that offered few usable results in return for substantial support. Future collaborations will have to find a better balance. Two concepts may prove particularly valuable:
First, industry may establish independent research groups in academic institutions. These groups should work in a defined field but otherwise be free in the choice of their specific subjects. In return for their financial support, the industrial partners should have the right to exclusive licenses on the group’s results. A commonly defined specific subject and close contacts should help to assure that there is a fair return.
Second, in order to enhance the chances of successful marketing for products from academic research, or to find capital for start-ups, academic institutions may find it useful to create “incubators” where academic groups work not in order to publish their data, but in order to bring results from academic research closer to the market. Such work could be supported by public funds for limited periods of time, with reviews that reward marketability rather than pure scientific excellence.
I hope that such concepts will help to use academic knowledge in the outside world to the
benefit of all parties involved.

-Martin J. Lohse-