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As the bridge builder of strategic partnerships between corporations and the nation's largest engineering school, I have learned that there are several great ways to conduct research and development by partnering with a research university. You have already developed excellence in your core market, but you would like to find a way to explore offshoots and tangents to that core expertise. Research universities may be able to help with some of your Research and Development needs. While companies may call many of these activities R&D, universities make further distinctions that are important to know. Capstones Work with senior undergraduate students on a business problem. Capstones are mostly there to support the student learning experience, but it can also be used to try out wacky ideas or solve small, well-defined puzzles. Capstones are particular attractive options for start ups that have little capital, and large companies that want to de-risk their research investment portfolio by trying out lots of bite-sized projects. Capstones are just one element in your job pipeline strategy outlined in my previous article (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/building-robust-jobs-pipeline-how-work-universities-part-joseph-huang/). Contracts If you need something done under budget, time, and personnel constraint, universities can bring student workers limited to 20 hours a week to solve your business problems. We wrap the technical expertise of the students with project managers in order to deliver the project. Whereas capstones operate on the academic calendar, contracts operate on the business calendar. Research Consortia Join resources with other companies to conduct research that explores the boundaries of human knowledge. These types of research endeavors can result in pushing the entire industry forward with a new solution. They can also result in peer reviewed journal articles for the PhD students, post-doctoral fellows, and tenured track faculty. Shared risks comes with shared rewards. The membership fees from all corporate partners are pooled together, and you vote on projects that will be funded. The resulting knowledge is shared amongst all of the paying members of consortia and the university in the form of royalty-free, non-exclusive license. At Arizona State University, we have research consortia in photovoltaic, water resource management, data sciences, smart cities, and many more. The semiconductor industry has taken the consortia model to one of the highest forms. The Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) is a consortium by companies and the federal government that invests tens of millions of dollars on research that benefits all US semiconductor companies. Sponsored Research Partner with a research university to explore ideas with a time horizon further than your own internal R&D labs, or consider the viability of an idea with an university team before paying for the full expenses of a dedicated internal team. Some companies even view their partner universities as extensions of their own R&D lab. Sponsored research also explores the frontiers of human knowledge, with the goal of peer reviewed journal articles for PhD students, post-doctoral fellows, and tenured track faculty. Companies get results that they can incorporate, including explorations of validity of the underlying technology. Break New Ground How can research universities help you deepen your core expertise and explore adjacent markets? Joseph Huang is NACRO Co-President Elect and Executive Director of Strategic Research Initiatives, Computer Science, at Stanford University |
