Gaining Support Within Companies for Collaboration

Companies work with universities for a broad range of reasons. Prominent motivations include technology development, talent acquisition, workforce development, strategic marketing, and, in some cases, corporate social responsibility. Motivation for any one facet of collaboration typically evolves as a company matures and as its position in the industry changes. From the vantage point of an industry practitioner, this chapter reviews challenges and opportunities in gaining stakeholder support for university collaboration, including the need to accommodate (or the opportunity to instigate) evolution in corporate priorities and organizational structures. Armed with an understanding of those challenges, several practical approaches and solutions are outlined to illustrate a practitioner’s options for building support, including an illustrative case study drawn from the semiconductor industry. Finally, this chapter then discusses a growing need to consider not just the university–industry (UI) interface, but also the potential of other sectors (government agencies, the venture community, and nonprofits) to enhance and further motivate university collaborations as the broader research enterprise evolves. A tour of emerging challenges raises questions about the US national research enterprise and geopolitical issues, which are poised to create new opportunities for the alert practitioner to build stakeholder support for collaboration.