Industrially supported projects, which are an important part of industrial design education, have been carried on with an increasing pace in universities in Turkey for a long time. This thesis develops strategies to improve collaborative projects with industry in industrial design education, by examining how collaboration member benefit from each other&rsquo / s and which problems do they encounter with collaboration / and to find out what the needs and expectations of all members are through a case study of graduation projects. As a case study, the graduation project course in the Department of Industrial Design at Middle East Technical University in 2005 spring semester was chosen, where collaboration with industry has been regularly held since 2002. Results of questionnaires with all collaboration members namely the students, educators and company representatives were evaluated in order to develop strategies. As a conclusion, implications to facilitate further developments of university- industry collaboration projects and academic schemes are reached.

Collaboration between academia and industry has been the focus of numerous government reports and initiatives over the past 15 years, and is increasingly recognized as an effective way to capitalize on the UK's world-class research base. However, there is a need to further understand the role of such collaborations in the field of translational medicine, where the path to market is particularly lengthy, expensive, and risky, due to complexities associated with the clinical trial process. This research uses a mixed methods approach to investigate collaboration in translational medicine at the University of Oxford. The project comprises three principal stages. First, a broad understanding of the current landscape of academia-industry collaboration in translational medicine was obtained by administering a questionnaire to academics who had received industry funding. Next, a deeper understanding of the barriers to collaboration was sought through semi-structured interviews with 27 academics. Finally, potential strategies to reduce practical barriers to the collaboration process were investigated through interviews with members of three groups within the university who interact directly with industry: Research Services, Oxford University Innovation, and Business Development. This research constitutes the first empirical study on university-industry collaboration in translational research in the United Kingdom. It contributes to existing theory through the development of a new theoretical framework for the evaluation of barriers in terms of a) the practicalities of the collaboration process, b) the institutional environment and c) presiding cultures. Through these analyses, differences in experiences of barriers to collaboration emerged for clinical and non-clinical researchers. Furthermore, industry was seen as playing a crucial role in the translation of new therapeutics, especially in the funding of research that was perceived as being ‘too risky’ for Research Councils. Thus, reducing barriers to university-industry collaboration was seen as important to the realisation of public benefit from university research. Barriers were seen as being overcome, or avoided, via the formation of relationships between academics and companies at several different levels; while systems exist within the university to facilitate this, awareness and uptake of these systems was poor amongst the study population. Finally, if universities are to deliver impact as a key metric of performance, incentives within the university need to reward academics for commercialisation activities, in addition to publication. Through the suggestion of long and short-term strategies and a detailed analysis of industrial collaboration in this setting, this research has implications for both university and government policy.

This is a theoretical research report that advocates the achievement of competitiveness in formulating strategies of co-operation with industry participants through the establishment of collaborative networks. A collaborative network is reviewed from a theoretical perspective to add insight into the subject as a mechanism for firms to achieve competitiveness and sustainability. The theory of collaborative networks is explored further in identifying the interdependent components of collaborative networks to better understand their establishment and management. The literature on government policy is also examined from an industry competitiveness perspective, with particular emphasis on the influence of government policy in ensuring successful collaborative networks that achieve industry competitiveness.By using a single case design in the South African Automotive Sector, the interdependent components are linked to the organisational design of the collaborative network. The research was exploratory in developing and extending the theory into an integrated model in assessing the competitiveness of the automotive industry.The research found that the ability to participate in a collaborative network is a strategic resource that firms need to acquire. The research confirmed the establishment and development of the network structure, strategy, dynamics and culture as the enabling platform for successful collaboration with in a network. The research found that the governance structures within the collaborative network are critical in establishing the balance between competition and co-operation and in evolving relationships into partnerships that define the collaborative network as a strategic organisation. The research also found collaborative networks are unique manifestations that achieve efficiencies beyond economic benefit for the participants of the network to the achievement of socio-economic benefit for the industry in the form of entrepreneurship development, job creation and skills transfer. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This thesis examines the barriers, especially intellectual property rights concerned that inhibit industry academia collaboration. By analyzing Swedish firms in the engineering industry, I explore the influence of IPR barrier on firms’ benefits, short- and long-term respectively from university-industry interaction. Three hypotheses are suggested to investigate the relationship between IPR barriers, firm categories, short-term benefits and long-term benefits. The results illustrate different firms’ reactions to IPR barriers. According to the analysis, advanced firms are more likely to report IPR barriers. Moreover, they tend to benefit more in the long run. However, the short-term benefits from UI collaboration seem to have no significant relationship with IPR barriers. There is hence no proof in the data that IPR barriers are a significant hinder for firms to benefit from university-industry interaction.

This thesis reports a research study to measure the impact of industrial sponsorship on student, academia, and industry. The thesis provides a review of the literature in the field of engineering education, university-industry collaboration and student sponsorship. It describes the design of the study and methods of data collection and data analysis. It then presents a discussion of the impact of sponsorship. The research project was conducted at Loughborough University from 2006-2009. It has captured existing practice across sponsored and non-sponsored programmes within the Engineering Faculty at Loughborough University together with a small number of national and international sponsorship schemes. Data were collected from the undergraduate engineering students, graduates, sponsoring/non sponsoring companies, and the academic staff of engineering departments using questionnaires, interviews and documentary analysis. This study highlights the values and issues of the relationship between employers and students during their undergraduate study from the perspective of students, employers and academic staff. It takes a mixed-method approach to assess the attitudes and perception of individuals from these parties and identify the barriers which limit further engagement in order to propose guidelines for further improvements. The results show that the majority of the stakeholders valued industrial sponsorship as a way of developing the quality of undergraduate degrees and generating enough of the high quality engineers that the industry needs. There was close agreement on these matters between the parties involved. Overall the findings of the research showed that the parties main expectations of sponsorship schemes were largely met by the reality of sponsorship. Greater awareness of the details of sponsorship schemes, including how they work and what is involved, would make employers more likely to offer sponsorship and encourage more students to apply for sponsorship. Conclusions are drawn on the benefits that sponsorship offers, the incentives for these stakeholders, the role of sponsorship in building a relationship between students and their future employers, its contribution to the attainment of learning outcomes, the degree of sponsorship attractiveness to the investigated companies, the obstructions which limit partnership and recommendations for further developments.

Although emerging technologies offer the construction industry many opportunities for IT-enabled collaboration environments, the companies adopting these technologies usually fail. in achieving the full benefits from their implementations. The reason for this is found as focusing too much on the technical factors and ignoring or underestimating the factors related to change, implementation, human and organizational factors, and the roles of the management and end-users. Each new information technology implementation involves some change for the organization and the employees, and is therefore a source of resistance and confusion unless special attention is paid to managing this change. This research aims to find how to introduce collaboration environments to construction organizations and how to manage the changes required in order to obtain the full benefits from their implementation. In order to achieve this aim, the theoretical concepts and previous work on collaboration environment implementations in construction industry, and change management with a focus on organizational change management are reviewed. The perspective of the construction organizations on the implementation of collaboration environments are investigated conducting case studies. Based on the findings from the literature review and the case studies, an organizational change management framework is developed for implementing collaboration environments. A computer based prototype is also developed in order to automate the framework. The framework and the prototype are evaluated by the industry professionals.

À medida que a inovação se torna um ponto fundamental para a agregação de valor das empresas, o seu gerenciamento torna-se uma ferramenta essencial para garantir a competitividade das organizações no mercado. Neste contexto, a cooperação universidade-empresa surge como uma alternativa externa às empresas para o desenvolvimento de suas aptidões inovadoras. Considerando a importância destas cooperações para o desenvolvimento econômico, a presente pesquisa teve como objetivo o mapeamento das redes de relacionamentos a partir dos projetos de desenvolvimento tecnológico desenvolvidos entre as empresas multinacionais brasileiras, suas subsidiárias e universidades ou institutos de pesquisas, por meio das concessões de patentes, que abrangem os modelos de invenção, de modelo de utilidade, depositados em bancos nacional e internacional. O estudo é uma pesquisa qualitativa, com abordagem descritiva, utilizando o método de levantamento de dados secundários dos bancos de pedidos de patentes nacional (Instituto Nacional de Propriedade Industrial - INPI) e internacional (Escritório Europeu de Patentes - EPO). O universo da pesquisa abrange quatro empresas multinacionais brasileiras, do setor de extração ou de transformação de recursos naturais, que desenvolvem atividades de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento em processos de cooperação tecnológica. As patentes concedidas para estas empresas foram analisadas com o intuito de se verificar quais destes documentos envolviam projetos de cooperação tecnológica; e a partir do uso da análise de redes sociais examinou-se e mapeou-se as estruturas das redes de relacionamentos, destas organizações com suas subsidiarias e universidades ou institutos de pesquisa. Esta pesquisa demonstra o processo de cooperação tecnológica no Brasil e sua dinâmica, enfatizando a importância do envolvimento em redes de cooperação para o fortalecimento da inovação tecnológica nas organizações. / As innovation becomes a fundamental issue to aggregate value to companies, its management is an essential tool to guarantee market competitiveness among organizations. In this context, university-industry collaboration appears as an external alternative for companies to develop their innovation aptitudes. Considering the importance of these collaborations for economic growth, the present research aims at mapping relationships networks among Brazilian multinational companies, their subsidiaries and research institutes or universities through patent concessions, registered in national and international databases. This is a descriptive qualitative study based on secondary data methodology research from national and international patent databases (INPI National Institute for Industrial Property and EPO European Patent Office). The research includes four Brazilian multinational companies from the natural resource extraction and transformation industry involved in research and development collaboration with other organizations. Their patents have been analyzed in order to verify which documents are involved in technology cooperation projects; thereafter, the social network analysis has been used to study relationship structures and map their collaboration networks. This research demonstrates the collaboration process and its dynamics in Brazil and shows the importance of being involved in collaboration networks that will strengthen technological innovation in organizations.

Increased interaction between scientists and the social environment is considered to be one of the characteristics of modern science. This interaction can occur through collaboration between different sectors in society. In connection to this, the Triple Helix model claims that interaction between university, industry and public sectors, is key to modern innovation development. So far, cross-sector interaction between actors in environmental science has been scarcely studied in a scientific manner. Most studies carried out in the area have disregarded the actual practice of such collaborations and what happens in projects where these sectors interact. As this has become a common way to solve environmental problems, it is of considerable importance to gain more knowledge about this process. The objective of this research was to study and explain cross-sector collaboration. Using the interactive research method, characterised by joint learning and interaction with the participants, this was explored through two case studies. The method was well suited for studying ongoing interactions between the university, industry and public sectors. The first case was an international collaboration between representatives of the Triple Helix sectors. Here, olive-mill wastewater in Greece was the focus. The Triple Helix framework was used both on the intended analytical level and at a management level closer to the actor level of the participants. The second case was a three-year environmental research project in the Kalmar region where strong university-industry collaboration was carried out in order to find wastewater treatment solutions in the wood industry. This collaboration was extended to include more actors in the region during the process. The actual practice of these cases showed the importance of a dialogue between participants. Triple Helix can be used as an initial framework for such a dialogue through which the model is redefined by input from all sectors.

The integrated profit and loss (IP&L™) model is a model that provides a holistic performance evaluation of the organisation. The purpose of this study has been to explore how IP&L™ can be used in a wider setting and contribute towards more sustainable practices for an industry. The aim has therefore been to investigate advantages of having a widespread usage of the IP&L™ method, and to find out how the method can be spread to more companies. Based on this, the following three research questions was developed: What are the advantages of IP&L™ within an industry? What are the key factors in order to spread IP&L™ to other companies? What are the prerequisites for collaboration around IP&L™? The study has had a deductive and qualitative approach, investigating two different case companies. One company within the Australian water industry, and one within the Swedish forest industry. Data was collected through interviews with representatives from three different perspectives of working with IP&L™ within each company; the strategic perspective of sustainable development, the perspective of integrated reporting, and the market and customer perspective. It has been found that the main advantages of IP&L™ within an industry is that it develops consensus and new norms, enhances the external communication, and improves industry reputation. In order to spread IP&L™ to other companies, the study show that collaboration is an important factor, and to establish fruitful collaboration around IP&L™, it is important with leadership and dialogue. This study contributes to theory by providing knowledge around the specific IP&L™ model. It further has a practical contribution in the sense that it provides deeper knowledge around the IP&L™ and its usefulness, and can serve as a foundation for organisations in further developing how they use IP&L™.

Background and Research Problem: Universities are complex and diversified institutions playing an active role in society. Besides education and research universities are now assigned a new role of commercialization of academic research. There is pressure on universities to act as a bridge for transfer of knowledge to industries and generate resources. As this role of commercialization is comparatively new for the universities so they face challenges and difficulties in managing commercialization along with education and research. In order to overcome these challenges some support structures has been introduced in the form of Technology Transfer Office (TTO) or Industry Liaison Office (ILO). As the role and support structures are new, so there is a need to develop such a managerial system which can better integrate the activities related to commercialization of academic research.   Research Purpose: This is a case study of Umeå University conducted to understand and evaluate the commercialization activities and functioning of support structures. The specific purpose is to investigate and suggest that, how universities having support structures but lacking success stories and track records, should manage its commercialization activities.   Method: Qualitative research methods are used and semi-structured interviews have been conducted from eight respondents. Umeå University has been used as a case study. Concluding Comments: On the basis of this study we would like to comment that, Umeå University is committed to perform its third role of contribution towards society and there is adequate infrastructure available in terms of support structures. But still as this role is new for the university and carrying on commercialization activities while insuring freedom of research is a challenging task. So, a detailed evaluation of existing support structures and reorganization of their existing activities is required. It may also require better understanding and communication of the concept of commercialization, generation of new ideas and a greater attention, both from the support structures and central management of the university.