Pain and gain in the collaboration journey
At Intellect Labs we’ve been fortunate to work on funding proposals for some exciting collaborative projects. When done right, these alliances between businesses and universities & research institutions (URIs) can drive innovation to solve real-world problems and rapidly fill gaps in the market.
Despite the benefits, the readiness of Australian businesses to enter such strategic alliances is a bit of a mixed bag and barriers arise on both sides of the fence. There are various programs and tools available that seek to break down these barriers, but there’s still plenty of room for solutions that raise awareness about collaboration and help match businesses with the right researchers.
Barriers to industry-research collaboration
In 2021, the CSIRO commissioned RMIT University researchers to undertake one of Australia’s largest-ever surveys of SME leaders to hear directly how and why they engaged with the R&D sector and what were the real and perceived enablers and barriers to collaboration[i]. The report found that barriers for SMEs included:
the perception that URI traditions and working environments are premised on more long-term approaches with flexible timelines to delivery
lack of confidence in the ability of URIs to understand the day-to-day problems that they face or how to solve them
viewing academics as in pursuit of research outcomes of less interest to them.
From the URI perspective, barriers included:
academics may regard SMEs as being too rigid on timelines and too focused on quick results that may be unattainable
academics may be concerned that collaborations with SMEs do not yield important academic outputs.[ii]
In 2017, the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science also interviewed 30 businesses that included those who were collaborating with URIs, had not collaborated, or had collaborated but were no longer doing so[iii]. Collaboration ‘pain points’ identified by the industry participants included:
businesses may not be aware of collaboration as an option
businesses may have difficulty finding the right organisation or researcher to help them
cost structures involved in collaboration activities may be seen as prohibitive
businesses may not be aware of government assistance to offset costs.[iv]
It is interesting that a lot of the pain points identified in both reports relate to perceptions and difficulties experienced before collaboration begins. The biggest problem seems to lie in getting the conversation started.
Some of these perceptions may result from previous experience, but many result from a lack of knowledge about how to enter the collaboration journey, or a pre-existing view that collaboration isn’t a good solution.
So what tools are available to help a business get started in the collaboration journey and resolve pain points in the pre-collaboration experience? At Intellect Labs, our Collaboration Management team can help to facilitate connections between research and industry. We can match your business with the right researcher based on your needs, priorities and research areas. Once you’ve made a connection, a collaborative grant opportunity can be a great place to start and we can help you to find that too.
[i] CSIRO Report, Enablers and barriers to industry-research collaboration: A small and medium-sized enterprise perspective https://www.csiro.au/-/media/SME-Connect/21-00095_SER-SME_REPORT_IndustryUniCollaborators.pdf
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Business Research Collaboration - Discovery Report, July 2017 https://www.industry.gov.au/sites/default/files/2019-02/business-research-collaboration-project-discovery-report.pdf
[iv] Ibid p 15.