Optimizing university research collaborations

Although the Industrial Research Institute's R&D Trends Forecast for 2000 p redicted more external R&D collaborations, accompanied by increased grants to universities, most research partnerships remain underutilized. They neit her target strategic technological challenges nor function effectively. Nor do companies harvest the results as efficiently as they might. To remedy t his, companies must develop organizational practices for aligning strategic ally, managing collaboratively and evaluating consistently. They must learn when to work with a university, how to select the right partner, how best to initiate, implement and integrate projects, and how to evaluate and lear n from the collaboration experience.