Exploring open innovation and collaboration in University - Industry Partnerships

This interdisciplinary research study focuses on the creation of innovation through cross-sector collaboration and value-added factors between buyers (university academics) and suppliers (scientific equipment manufacturers) embedded in the context of a specific university’s procurement tender process. The study’s research questions are:
1) What is the success of cross-sector collaboration (CSC) and value-added factors that drive new product innovation and University-Industry collaboration?
2) What cross-sector collaboration (CSC) and value-added factors do buyers (university) and suppliers (industry) consider important when developing a collaboration and do the study participant’s demographics influence these factors?
3) How can these cross-sector collaboration (CSC) success and value-added factors become integrated into the procurement tender process and documentation to make the process more conducive to cross-sector collaboration for innovation?
4) What model can drive buyer (university) and supplier (industry) collaboration for new product innovation?
Using a qualitative approach, the author explored a research focused university and identified 15 tenders that had resulted in collaboration. Examining secondary data including the tender specification template, invitation to tender, supplier tender returns and one research contract, the author confirmed if the research questions and literature gaps could be answered. As the secondary data was incomplete, the author conducted 9 buyer telephone interviews and 8 supplier virtual meetings, to obtain participant responses to close the literature gaps and answer the research questions.
The findings are diverse including both buyer and supplier participants having previously engaged in collaboration. The author has identified two new buyer types, the Individual Academic and Core Service Academic. Suppliers adopt a local market manufacturing approach to provide the value-added factors buyers require. That suppliers have embedded specific buyers into their innovation process and linked the buyer knowledge to a specific model, resulting in the development of new product ranges for the external market.
From the study’s findings the author has theorised a visual model of university-industry collaboration, including the micro triple helix model, the value-added factors, CSC factors and tender recommendations to allow readers to understand the steps within the tender process that makes a collaboration a success (as shown in figure 9.1, Chapter 9).
Finally, the author made several recommendations to change the tendering documents and tender process, including adding equipment value-added factors to the tender specification template, a new value-added matrix, and a step-change to the tender process, to embed the value-added and CSC factors identified in this research study to make the tender process conducive to collaboration.