MAKING UNIVERSITY-INDUSTRY COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH SUCCEED

A spirit of collaborative partnership in the pre-competitive-domain is developing between basic research institutions, government and privat e industry. Such collaborative research programs increase the importan ce of the research opportunities, results and knowledge transfers betw een the participating companies and universities. Companies are beginn ing to realize the importance of collaborative research in evolving th eir core competencies and in making sound strategic decisions on how t o best deploy their R&D resources to maintain competitive advantage. H owever, they must develop a structured approach to university collabor ative research, and then develop this knowledge with the same determin ation as a product line is developed and marketed This article present s a structure for supporting effective knowledge transfers for univers ity/industry collaborative research programs in which the authors posi t: 1) a company agent and its role in developing and supporting univer sity/industry collaborative research programs, 2) a portfolio of disti nct linkages for university/industry collaborations utilized by this a gent, and 3) key indicators for the impact of knowledge transfers from these linkages.