In our modern era of innovation and research, mutual interdependence between academia and industry has come all the more to the fore, more so in international startups. Such arrangements are deemed to be highly successful, for they bring mutually complementary forces together that individually would not be achieved by either academia or industry alone. Academic centers bring with them bases of theory, methodological sophistication, and long-range vision for research, and industry provides hands-on knowledge, access to finance, and a channel to implementation and exploitation. Syntheses of different but mutually compatible visions thereby give birth to a situation in which innovation can get rooted and complex world problems can get solved better.

Virtues of academic-industrial collaboration register in its capacity to bridge theory and practice. While universities are best positioned to create new knowledge and advance scientific frontiers further, industries ensure that outputs of such studies are useful, deployable, and scalable to practicalities. In cross-border startups, such complementarity is strengthened further by richness of resources and networks that either party comes with to the negotiation table. Universities gain advantage from access to markets, policy-making circles, and bases of production that go with their industrial partners while companies gain advantage from world academic study bases and highly skilled vocational training of students upon whom they graduate. Overall, collaboration not only facilitates fast-tracking of export of ideas from laboratories to society but enhances its international visibility and reach for participating institutions.

But weaknesses also flow from this relationship. Differences between academic and industrial centers in structure and culture lead to conflicts that are difficult to resolve. Academic centers are most interested in scholarship that is long-range and curiosity-led and value knowledge transfer through publishing highly, while industries are most driven by short-range considerations of profit and prefer secrecy to gain competitive advantage. 

This difference can lead to disagreements over schedule for projects, rights to intellectual properties, and amount of knowledge transfer. In multinational settings, added problems come from differences in regulations, bureaucratic processes, and working challenges of management in a number of countries, languages, and time zones.

It has to sustain cooperation even after the official lifespan of a project. Without proper mechanisms for longer-term cooperation that benefits all, international projects’ successes can end up being limited to their immediate objectives without yielding lasting impacts. For that reason, painstaking planning, clear understandings, and instilling mutual respect are required to make sure that collaboration remains efficient and sustainable.

In a nutshell, academic-industrial collaboration in overseas businesses possesses massive potential by combining heterogeneous strengths to enhance innovation and problem-solving capacity worldwide. However, its vulnerabilities entrenched in cultural, structural, and procedural variations need to be identified and transcended. The future of such collaborations rests with partners being capable of converting potential strains into opportunities for synergy, blending academic curiosity with industrially useful knowledge, and creating platforms for maintaining large-scale collaboration over a number of years.Author
Mehmet KARA
Early Stage Researcher in VILLAGE Project
Ph.D. Candidate, Ege University