Development of a framework for improving university-industry collaboration

Project aim

The aim of this work is to investigate the nature of the collaboration among university, industry and research centres through the analysis of the factors that affect this collaboration in order to establish a positive impact in terms of competitiveness and performance. To do this, I will be developing a framework for working closely with universities in order to speed up the commercialisation of knowledge to help the UK industry to gain a competitive advantage.

Project background

In the last decade, the phenomenon of university-industry collaborations has had substantial interest as a source for knowledge production and new technological advancements, providing one of the core pillars for innovation and economic development. Many studies have been undertaken on this type of collaboration, which is based on the model such as the Fraunhofer model. However, this model is too general to describe the innovation and it does not fit well for the UK.

The issue for this collaboration is due to the gap between the early-stage basic research and commercialisation. This shows that there is not a model that addresses well the gap between research and practice. To overcome this problem, translation knowledge is necessary, which is carried out through translational infrastructure (i.e. research centres) that are positioned between academia and industry. Thus, the research centre has the aim to facilitate collaboration between university and industry to transfer academic results for commercial purposes.