Application Of Opportunity Lenses

Application of Opportunity Lenses

The focus of this assignment is the application of nine lenses of opportunity to a case study organization. Start the assignment with selecting an organization (Netflix, Inc.) that uses strategic opportunities for innovation. The goal of the assignment is to submit a course project that analyzes a publicly traded organization through the nine lenses of opportunity mapping. In the introduction of the paper briefly identify and describe your company of choice and the industry in which it operates and explain your rationale for selecting it. Your rationale should include an analysis of how the organization fits with innovative models, approaches, leadership, and the use of strategic assumptions. Be sure to provide APA citations and references to support on the discussion of the organization and industry.

The lenses are:

1. Product and service innovation
2. Customer interaction innovation
3. Disruptive innovation
4. Business model innovation
5. Messaging innovation
6. Business (enabling) ecosystem innovation
7. Competency platform innovation
8. Alliances, acquisitions, and collaboration innovation
9. Global market innovation

This paper is to assess how each of the lenses could or currently does apply and what is the relative risk—resources expended—versus potential revenue and profit. All lenses may not apply; if they do not, why? In each case, begin with the theory behind the lens followed by your application to the selected case study organization. Keep in mind the implications of sustainability:

1. The enduring nature of the opportunities.
2. How the opportunities reflect the impact of environmental concerns.

In your submission, be sure to explain why this organization is a good fit for applying innovative models and lenses and evaluates the fit of leadership approaches.

Sample opportunity map attached.

The last step is to create an opportunity map demonstrating the lenses, using the Sample Opportunity Map as a guide. The opportunity map plots opportunities over time (X-axis) compared to potential impact on the business (Y-axis) divided in three primary sections:

1. In the business—incremental.
2. On the business—new offering or value proposition.
3. Out of the business—redefines the business or category.

• Written communication: Must be free of errors, scholarly, professional, and consistent with expectations for members of the business profession.
• APA formatting: Your essay should be formatted according to APA (6th edition) style and formatting.
• Length: Minimum of 2,400 words, Times New Roman, 12-point font.
• Structure: Please include the following sections using APA headings (no abstract required):
  1. Introduction.
  2. Body headings as appropriate.
  3. Conclusions.
• SafeAssign: You will be submitting your paper through SafeAssign.
• References: A minimum of five PRJ or PJ references (in addition to the required course readings).
• Writing Feedback Tool: Your instructor may also use the Writing Feedback Tool to provide feedback on your writing. In the tool, click on the linked resources for helpful writing information.

  PLEASE NOTE THAT GRAY AREAS REFLECT ARTWORK THAT HAS BEEN INTENTIONALLY REMOVED. THE SUBSTANTIVE CONTENT OF THE ARTICLE APPEARS AS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED.

  COLLABORATIONS BETWEEN COMPANIES and universities are critical drivers of the innovation economy. These relationships have long been a mainstay of corporate research and devel-

  opment (R&D) — from creating the knowledge foundations for the next generation of solutions, to

  serving as an extended “workbench” to solve short-term, incremental problems, to providing a flow of

  newly minted talent. As many corporations look to open innovation to augment their internal R&D

  efforts, universities have become essential partners. Indeed, companies now look to universities to

  anchor an increasingly broad set of innova-

  tion activities, especially those grounded in

  engaging with regional innovation ecosys-

  tems. Silicon Valley, Kendall Square in

  Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Block 71 in

  Singapore are among the most visible inno-

  vation ecosystems where universities are

  essential stakeholders in an innovation com-

  munity that also includes corporations,

  government entities, venture investors, and

  entrepreneurs. Thus, in addition to serving

  as sources of people and ideas for corpora-

  tions, universit y collaborations are an

  important mechanism for corporations

  seeking to open up new avenues of engage-

  ment with a broader innovation ecosystem.

  Following corporate giants like General

  Electric, Siemens, Rolls-Royce, and IBM,

  which have collaborated with universities for

  years, a variety of younger companies in-

  cluding Amazon, Facebook, Google, and

  Uber are using universities as a key part of

  Developing Successful Strategic Partnerships With Universities

  I N N O VA T I O N

  For many companies, universities have become essential innovation partners. However, companies often struggle to establish and run university partnerships effectively. BY LARS FRØLUND, FIONA MURRAY, AND MAX RIEDEL

  THE LEADING QUESTION How can companies improve their partner- ships with universities?

  FINDINGS �Universities offer a wide and at times bewildering array of modes of engagement.

  �Articulate strategic goals for partner- ships and then choose collabora- tion structures that align with those goals.

  �Identify key perfor- mance indicators to evaluate the partnerships.

  WINTER 2018 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 71

   

   

  72 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW WINTER 2018 SLOANREVIEW.MIT.EDU

  I N N O VA T I O N

  their early-stage innovation and new ventures

  strategy.1 Even smaller, more regionally oriented

  companies in diverse sectors such as mining and au-

  tomotive have come to believe that universities are

  key ecosystem stakeholders in supporting and shap-

  ing their regional economies. For example, IQE plc,

  a compound semiconductor company based in

  Cardiff, U.K., supports a regional innovation eco-

  system through its collaborative relationship with

  Cardiff University. The partners have developed a

  translational research facility to train scientists and

  technicians in compound semiconductor technol-

  ogies and support an R&D facility to help U.K.

  businesses exploit advances in these technologies.

  Such collaborations between corporations and uni-

  versities foster the innovation ecosystem.

  While the aspirations of university-industry

  partnerships can be easily described, many compa-

  nies find it challenging to establish and run these

  partnerships effectively, even when key financial

  resources and human capital are available. The

  challenge is amplified in an ecosystem where the

  various stakeholders, all with their own ambitions,

  need to be properly aligned to achieve impact. In

  our research, we have found that both corporations

  and universities confront a general level of frustra-

  tion and a mismatch in culture and governance

  when they collaborate. (See “About the Research.”)

  Although many factors contribute to the frus-

  tration, the core reason is that university culture —

  characterized by high autonomy and distributed

  governance — maps poorly to corporate culture.

  Universities offer companies a wide and at times

  bewildering array of faculty, programs, and other

  modes of engagement. Even when the formats for

  interaction are established, there is often a pro-

  found mismatch in the expectations and goals for

  joint engagement.

  Given both the promise and the challenge of

  university-industry interactions today, it’s impor-

  t a n t to ex p l ore t h e f a c tor s t h a t m a ke su ch

  collaborations successful. We have found that a sys-

  tematic approach to university partnerships within

  innovation ecosystems requires both companies

  and universities to be well prepared before the en-

  gagement even begins. In particular, companies

  need to move from an ad hoc to a strategic ap-

  proach to partnerships with universities.

  From Ad Hoc to Strategic Partnerships In an ad hoc approach, university collaborations are

  first and foremost established by individual re-

  searchers or engineers in the company and focus on

  specific R&D needs identified by those individuals.

  This means that collaboration partners are likely

  chosen based on personal experience and the net-

  works of the researchers and engineers in the

  company. The rationale for university partner selec-

  tion is familiarity between individual researchers,

  not between the two organizations as a whole.

  Although this may mean that many potentially valu-

  able aspects of a university partnership are ignored,

  such approaches create what has been described as

  an “extended workbench.”2 Such collaborations,

  though small, are often agile. From the perspective

  of the corporation, the university collaboration is

  limited to the specific project (typically within a

  business unit), and thus there is no centralized or-

  ganization. From the university’s perspective,

  individual researchers and their students gain a

  source of funding, insight into relevant problems,

  and opportunities to access novel assets or partners.

  Ad hoc approaches often lead to a large number

  of collaborations (sometimes numbering in the

  hundreds) with little synergy. Each agreement is

  negotiated individually, which tends to put a heavy

  workload on legal departments, leading to delays.

  In addition, opportunities for broader engagement

  and impact are lost. Consequently, large companies

  and many leading universities have shown interest

  in more strategic programs.

  As companies enter into strategic agreements

  with universities, they have begun to organize their

  relationships with universities into tiers. “Top-tier”

  relationships are no longer simply based on per-

  sonal connections between an academic and a

  corporate researcher. Increasingly, companies se-

  lect universities based on their expertise in an area

  of strategic importance and their familiarity to the

  company. In fact, companies have started to use

  company-wide master research agreements to cre-

  ate transparency in their collaboration activities,

  improve their negotiating positions, accelerate the

  deployment of projects, and encourage interfaculty

  collaboration on topics of shared interest. Such

  approaches are reminiscent of relationships

  ABOUT THE RESEARCH The article draws on the re- sults of a four-year research project, as well as on many years of experience in advising companies and universities on establishing and managing university- industry partnerships in specific regional innovation ecosystems. The research project investigated strate- gic programs for industry- university collaborations with a focus on (1) the de- velopment of specialized units and people for univer- sity relations and their professionalization, (2) the change from an ad hoc approach to a strategic approach to university partnerships, and (3) the corporate success factors for university partnerships. The research was conducted through a qualitative inquiry consisting of participant ob- servation, semi-structured interviews, and workshops. The article also draws on challenges that participants in the MIT Regional Entre- preneurship Acceleration Program have encountered in university-industry partnerships.i

   

   

  SLOANREVIEW.MIT.EDU WINTER 2018 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 73

  established back in the 1980s between Harvard

  Medical School and Hoechst A.G., Washington

  University and Monsanto, and MIT and Exxon;

  and the longstanding relationship between the

  University of Oxford and Rolls-Royce.3 More com-

  prehensive agreements are particularly attractive to

  universities because they enable individuals from

  corporate labs to be embedded on-site at the uni-

  versity, provide a more stable source of funding,

  and allow for more multifaceted interactions.

  The change from incremental problem-solving

  to shared strategic work on grand challenges or deep

  exploration is important because it signals that uni-

  versities are places not just to establish an extended

  workbench to solve predefined problems but also to

  tackle more ambitious challenges that have a more

  open-ended, exploratory emphasis.4 Within corpo-

  rations, the creation of strategic programs has led to

  the institutionalization of specialized units for uni-

  versity relations, often situated in the corporate R&D

  organization with reporting lines to senior manage-

  ment. Such units play a leading role in defining the

  focus areas for collaboration, designing formats,

  selecting partner universities, offering advice re-

  garding intellectual property rights, evaluating

  collaborations, and continually managing the

  interactions between the company and the univer-

  sities. Universities have made fewer organizational

  changes, but the development of specific corporate

  programs for engagement with particular research

  centers, departments, or initiatives has become more

  commonplace, and the number of licensing and

  contract professionals has grown.

  As a next step in the evolution of university part-

  nerships, strategic programs are now increasingly

  seen as the fulcrum for broader innovation ecosys-

  tem engagement (in part because large corporations

  are seeking external input throughout the innova-

  tion process, from initial idea to impact). Companies

  may link to the ecosystem via a range of local entities

  (for example, local governments, school systems,

  and startup communities). However, particularly

  when companies are working with universities ac-

  tively engaged in startup creation and research

  translation, familiarity with the university and its

  collection of innovation activities can become a nat-

  ural entry point for companies to develop broader

  links into the innovation ecosystem. The shift also

  aligns with the ways in which universities today are

  participating in local and regional economic devel-

  opment and playing a part on a global stage.

  Conversely, it would be difficult to imagine innova-

  tion ecosystem engagement taking place without a

  deep connection to the local university.

  Moving from ad hoc to strategic to ecosystem

  partnerships places ever more demands on univer-

  sity-corporate interactions. On the corporate side,

  business units, global R&D, and venturing units all

  want seats at the table, with each party bringing its

  respective needs and values. On the university side,

  individual labs, centers and initiatives, and entre-

  preneurship programs all have an interest in the

  engagement. Our research is based on our interest

  in both understanding and learning how to opti-

  mize these naturally complex relationships. As part

  of that research, we have found that companies that

  work through six important questions are better

  positioned to develop an effective approach to

  interaction with a range of universities across dif-

  ferent innovation ecosystems.

  Preparing for Systematic Engagement With Universities We recommend that companies consider these six

  fundamental questions:

  1. What business goals drive your university

  partnerships?

  2. What are the key focus areas of your university

  partnerships, and how are they selected to ensure

  alignment with your business goals?

  3. Who are your primary university partners, and

  by what criteria are they chosen?

  4. What collaboration formats match your focus

  areas and business goals?

  5. What people, processes, and organizational

  structures support your university partnerships?

  6. What key performance indicators are most use-

  ful for evaluating your university partnerships?

  These questions are closely linked; when the

  answers are aligned, they provide a logic for engage-

  ment that is more strategic and, in our experience,

  more likely to be effective. The six questions can be di-

  vided into three groups. The first two are about the

  business goals — the strategic goals that university

  partnerships should deliver for the company. The next

  two questions emphasize the partners (who) and

   

   

  74 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW WINTER 2018 SLOANREVIEW.MIT.EDU

  I N N O VA T I O N

  collaboration formats (how). Together, the first four

  questions form the core of a systematic approach to

  university partnerships. The remaining two questions

  are about ensuring that the right people, processes, or-

  ganizational structures, and evaluation tools are in

  place so that the university and the company can ensure

  that the partnership is delivering value to both parties.

  QUESTION 1: What business goals drive your

  university partnerships? Companies have various

  reasons for wanting to engage in university partner-

  ships, and they often have difficulty articulating their

  goals in clear business terms. Working with compa-

  nies with emerging best practices in this field, we

  found the business goals that drive university inter-

  actions can often be grouped into five categories:

  Short-Term, Incremental Problem-Solving This often occurs within an existing product line and is,

  as already mentioned, sometimes referred to as an

  “extended workbench.”

  Talent Identification and Hiring For many compa- nies, talent acquisition at levels from undergraduates

  to Ph.D.s to postdocs is a primary business goal of

  partnerships with universities.

  Long-Term Development of New Technologies These interactions are often referred to as “grand

  challenges” or “deep exploration,” and they involve

  companies seeking new technologies and solutions

  to broad-based customer needs that may lead to

  new product lines or new businesses.

  Systematic Exposure to Startups For many companies, exposure to startups (either research-

  or student-driven) while the startups are still part

  of the university can be an important incentive for

  interacting with universities, often with the in-

  volvement of corporate venturing units. Although

  there is no agreed-upon term for this, we will refer

  to it as exposure to the “startup pipeline.”

  Publicity and Political Influence A high-profile partnership with a prestigious university can lend

  luster to a company. In some regional innovation

  ecosystems, a partnership with a top research insti-

  tution can provide access to high-level government

  officials.

  Although each of these goals is distinct, they

  may be interrelated. For example, working collab-

  oratively on grand challenges can serve as a pathway

  to talent identification and, at times, to a startup (to

  move a solution out of the lab and into the world).

  Likewise, short-term engagements focused on in-

  cremental problem-solving might drive the hiring

  of individuals with specific skills needed for the

  company’s R&D activities. Addressing this first

  question — something few companies do — cre-

  ates an opportunity for a corporation to articulate a

  cohesive view of its business goals and how they re-

  late to its university interactions.

  QUESTION 2: What are the key focus areas

  of your university partnerships, and how are they

  selected to ensure alignment with your business

  goals? Within the business goals outlined, a compa-

  ny’s key focus areas for university partnerships must

  be specified in terms of particular innovation priori-

  ties. For a business goal such as talent identification,

  for example, the focus areas must be prioritized so

  that the “what” can be defined in terms of technical

  competence/capability (for example, bioprocess

  engineers); challenge areas (for example, new dis-

  tributed power systems); or product domains (for

  example, more efficient turbine blades). To ensure

  that university collaborations are properly aligned

  with the company’s business goals, the selection pro-

  cess for such partnerships should be as rigorous as a

  comparable internal process would be.

  For example, a large European automotive com-

  pany has an innovation board comprising the heads

  of R&D, production, and marketing innovation —

  the three divisions most relevant to the business goals

  for university partnerships. The board makes deci-

  sions on which focus areas should be part of future

  projects with universities and monitors ongoing proj-

  ects with partner universities. This process ensures

  that the focus areas of the current and future projects

  with universities are constantly aligned with the busi-

  ness goals that drive the university partnerships.

  QUESTION 3: Who are your primary university

  partners, and by what criteria are they chosen?

  Selecting university partners is no easy task. However,

  many leading corporations are making their selec-

  tion criteria more explicit — in ways that universities

  often welcome. The most common criteria include

  the following:

   

   

  SLOANREVIEW.MIT.EDU WINTER 2018 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 75

  • Familiarity and fit (previous joint projects, per-

  sonal relationships, many hires);

  • Location (if proximity, to headquarters or to an

  innovation ecosystem, is desirable);

  • Excellence (the reputation of the university, top-

  journal publications of a lab, or involvement of a

  particular researcher);

  • Legal framework (especially regarding issues such

  as intellectual property rights and access to uni-

  versity-based startups); and

  • Culture (especially regarding entrepreneurial cul-

  ture, openness to industry, and interdisciplinary

  collaboration).

  Our research indicates that successful companies

  continually define and refine their university selec-

  tion criteria as their experience grows and their

  goals change. One large U.S. corporation, for exam-

  ple, has developed an online tool that tracks the

  productivity and impact of its university partner-

  ships. The tool helps its R&D group make informed

  decisions about whom to partner with and ensures

  that projects are aligned with business goals of the

  company.

  QUESTION 4: What collaboration formats

  match your focus areas and business goals?

  Choosing the right collaboration format is at the

  heart of a successful university partnership. While

  traditional formats have mainly taken the form of

  companies sponsoring research in one or many

  projects, the variety of formats has been expanding

  in recent years. Among the formats we see today

  are contract research with a single lab, individual

  corporate employees embedded in a lab or re-

  sea rch center, cons or t ia m em b ers h ip, lar ge

  co-created research centers, open calls for grant

  proposals in a particular research area, student/

  corporate hackathons and idea contests, collabo-

  ration on publicly funded projects, fellowship

  programs, and jointly sponsored conferences and

  workshops. (See “A Variety of Industry-University

  Collaboration Formats.”)

  More novel and ambitious formats include the

  Cisco-University of British Columbia relationship,

  which aims to turn the university campus into a

  living lab for smart building systems,5 and the

  Global Innovation Exchange, funded initially by

  Microsoft and established in collaboration with

  Tsinghua University in Beijing and the University

  of Washington in Seattle, which provides a com-

  pelling example of more complex but increasingly

  relevant multiparty, multicontinent relationships.6

  Of course, the collaboration format a company

  chooses will depend on the goals it wishes to pursue.

  For companies prioritizing short-term, incremental

  problem-solving, contract research with a single lab

  may be the best way to seamlessly extend the

  workbench. If the goal is talent acquisition, student-

  oriented activities such as hackathons, competitions,

  and fellowships are highly effective in that they en-

  able the company to get to know a large number of

  talented students and evaluate their fit. Embedding

  employees within the university is a particularly ef-

  fective way to identify talent, particularly at the Ph.D.

  and postdoctoral level. To meet grand challenges,

  several formats are emerging as best practices: tar-

  geted but open calls for research proposals (perhaps

  preceded by a hackathon to raise awareness and ex-

  citement) and the co-creation of research centers.

  The opportunity to engage with the startup

  pipeline has emerged as another attractive business

  goal for university partnerships. Here again, there

  are various potential formats, all geared toward

  identifying and connecting to startups or even

  A VARIETY OF INDUSTRY-UNIVERSITY COLLABORATION FORMATS Contract research with a single lab is one of the most common forms of industry-university collaboration, but there are many other collaboration formats as well. Here is a sampling, with an example of each format.

  FORMAT EXAMPLE

  Embedded individuals

  MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratories, which encourage corporate researchers to work in a specific on-campus lab

  Consortia membership

  University of Cambridge Institute for Manufacturing corporate membership program

  Co-created research centers

  MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab

  Focused calls for research proposals

  Amazon Catalyst research grants initiated and piloted with the University of Washington

  Student hackathons

  MIT hackathon with the Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA) and the U.S. Department of Defense

  Student competitions

  The Siemens Global University Challenge

  Collaboration on publicly funded research

  Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) proposals

   

   

  76 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW WINTER 2018 SLOANREVIEW.MIT.EDU

  I N N O VA T I O N

  project teams that have yet to formally incorporate

  (which we refer to as “proto-startups”). Many

  proto-startups are associated with innovation and

  entrepreneurship programs in universities and in

  the wider innovation ecosystem. We found in our

  research that successful companies draw a distinc-

  tion between engaging with student-led startups

  (for example, via business plan competitions or stu-

  dent accelerators) and lab-based startups, where

  interaction typically includes consideration of in-

  tellectual property, engagement with faculty, and

  sharing of expertise around scale-up and testing,

  along with sponsored research.

  Companies that have expansive goals need to

  actively manage a complex portfolio of relation-

  ships and formats. The university-relations unit at

  one large pharmaceutical company, for example,

  continually evaluates and prioritizes its collabora-

  tion formats based on the evolving business needs

  and phases in the drug development process. The

  company uses fellowship programs to fund Ph.D.s

  and postdoctoral researchers and provide opportu-

  nities to bring them into the organization, both to

  drive know-how about grand challenges and for

  talent acquisition.

  Ultimately, successful partnering with universi-

  ties isn’t about choosing a particular collaboration

  format but about systematically prioritizing and

  reprioritizing different formats in response to

  changing business goals. Beyond that, it is about

  having the right people, processes, and organiza-

  tional support to ensure success and to identify and

  manage sources of tension. In our last two ques-

  tions, we will examine these issues.

  QUESTION 5: What people, processes, and or-

  ganizational structures support your university

  partnerships? Corporations with partnerships

  across a range of universities must create internal

  structures and processes to drive success. This raises

  questions about what structures will enable effec-

  tive interactions, what competencies university-

  relationship managers need, and what processes are

  best suited to support internal alignment between

  the technical expert level and the management level

  in the company and also between the company and

  the university.

  In terms of structure, the shift from an ad hoc

  approach to a strategic approach has spawned

  specialized units for university relations. But what

  are the best organizational structures to support

  the partnerships? If it makes sense for companies

  to establish units for university relations, should

  they be part of a centralized R&D function or op-

  erate as part of more decentralized business units?

  Our findings show that strategic partnerships do

  not have to be supported by a centralized unit that

  reports to the chief technical officer (CTO) or a se-

  nior vice president. Rather, it’s important that the

  primary business goals (and the particular choice

  of who, where, and how) shape the choices. If the

  problems you are trying to solve have been defined

  at the business-unit level, then partnership sup-

  port should take place within the business units

  themselves. If the goal is to undertake something

  larger (for example, a grand challenge), then it

  makes sense for the university-relations unit to be

  centralized and to report to a senior manager such

  as the CTO.7

  Regardless of organizational setup, company

  employees who serve at the university-corporate

  interface must be capable of acting as knowledge

  brokers between university partners and the com-

  pany. We suggest that companies designate two

  roles for each university partner: a management

  sponsor (usually a top manager such as a board

  member or country CEO), who is assigned to a

  specific university; and a university-relationship

  manager for R&D, who supports the sponsor

  within the company.

  Based on our experience, it works well if the uni-

  versity likewise appoints people to mirror those two

  corporate roles (ideally, a vice president or dean and

  an industry-partnership manager). On the corpo-

  rate side, the core team drives the processes that are

  covered by our six questions. Of course, when con-

  sidering the portfolio of university partnerships, the

  top executives and key managers involved with the

  relationships need to take part in the conversations

  and have an overview of the company’s engagement

  in various innovation ecosystems. But as noted

  above, the overall reporting structure needs to reflect

  the goals of the relationships. Beyond the internal

  organizational decisions, the corporate team and its

  university counterparts should explicitly address

  our six questions and use them to build a shared un-

  derstanding of success.

   

   

  SLOANREVIEW.MIT.EDU WINTER 2018 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 77

  QUESTION 6: What key performance indica-

  tors are most useful for evaluating your university

  partnerships? Evaluation is a critical element of an

  effective university-industry engagement. But as

  with any essential activity, the metrics of success

  must be carefully defined to ensure that what’s

  measured and tracked is closely aligned with the

  business goals. Both the key performance indica-

  tors (KPIs) you choose and the evaluation process

  are fundamental to ongoing effectiveness.

  Some of the most commonly used KPIs for uni-

  versity partnerships are cash investment, number of

  joint projects initiated per year, number of students

  hired, number of patents or licensing agreements,

  amount of public funding leveraged, effectiveness

  and efficiency of projects, number of faculty mem-

  bers and students involved in projects per year,

  number of ideas that turn into product develop-

  ment, and number of investments in startups. Our

  research suggests that successful companies tend to

  use a variety of KPIs (both quantitative and qualita-

  tive), and they define and redefine them periodically

  in terms of how they fit with the business goals and

  the collaboration formats.

  • If the goal is incremental problem-solving, then

  the KPIs should prioritize the effectiveness, time-

  liness, and efficiency of the researcher, group, or

  lab in delivering a solution.

  • For talent identification and hiring goals, the metrics

  might include number of applicants for key roles,

  successful hiring ratios, retention, and, over time, the

  hires’ performance within the corporation.

  • For grand challenges, the KPIs might include the

  number of proposals submitted, the diversity of the

  proposals, the number of faculty engaged, the extent

  to which external funding is leveraged, and, later, the

  effectiveness and breadth of the solutions developed.

  • For goals involving access to the startup pipeline,

  the KPIs might include the number of new startups

  coming out of the university in fields of interest to

  ASSESSING PARTNERSHIPS WITH UNIVERSITIES We have created this form, which we call the “university partnership canvas,” to allow business executives to address six key questions about their university partnerships visually. Working through these six questions can help companies develop a strategic perspective on their partnerships, thus setting up both companies and universities for more effective interactions. Note: This form is available for download as part of the online version of this article, which can be found at http://sloanreview.mit.edu/x/59205.

  FOCUS AREAS What are the key focus areas of your university partnership, and how are they selected to ensure alignment with your business goals?

  PARTNERS Who are your primary university partners, and by what criteria are they chosen?

  GOALS What business goals drive your university partnerships?

  FORMATS What collaboration formats match your focus areas and business goals?

  PEOPLE, PROCESSES, AND ORGANIZATION What people, processes, and organizational structures support your university partnerships?

  EVALUATION What key performance indicators are most useful for evaluating your university partnerships?

  UNIVERSITY PARTNERSHIP CANVAS Created for: Created by:

  Designed and developed by Lars Frølund, Max Riedel, and Fiona Murray

  Date: Version:

  2

  3 1 4

  5 6

   

   

  78 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW WINTER 2018 SLOANREVIEW.MIT.EDU

  I N N O VA T I O N

  the company, and the number and amount of the

  company’s investments in such startups.

  • Finally, if the goal is publicity and political influ-

  ence, then the number of high-level meetings,

  media mentions, and the level of satisfaction on the

  media relations team are among the relevant KPIs.

  As we have outlined, working through the six

  questions can help companies develop a strategic per-

  spective on their partnerships, thus setting up both

  companies and universities for more effective interac-

  tions and more successful ecosystem engagement. To

  implement the process, we have created a form we call

  the “university partnership canvas,”8 which allows ex-

  ecutives to represent the six questions visually. (See

  “Assessing Partnerships With Universities,” p. 77.)

  The University Partnership Canvas As we have noted, many companies have recently

  shifted their focus in university and innovation

  ecosystem engagement from incremental problem-

  solv ing toward long-ter m de velopment and

  systematic exposure to new startups. In doing so,

  however, our research shows that companies have

  not always done enough to reconfigure the other

  elements of their engagement approach.

  In such instances, the university partnership can-

  vas offers a tool to systematically help executives assess

  their existing approaches and identify inconsistencies

  between their business goals and, for example, the

  structure of their existing partnerships. Against this

  background, the canvas can help executives define

  possible solutions to overcome any mismatches or

  tensions. They can also use the canvas to explore the

  impact of changing business goals on their existing

  university partnerships and, against this background,

  make timely decisions on what to change.

  A technology company used the canvas to assess a

  strategic university partnership program that had

  been under way for more than five years, the primary

  business goal of which was to drive the development

  of new product lines or new businesses. As a first step

  in the assessment, we asked the people responsible

  for university relations globally to fill out the canvas,

  answering the questions one by one and inserting

  red lines and/or remarks when they found mis-

  matches or tensions — in other words, when their

  answers to the six questions didn’t reinforce each

  other. (See “Additional Resources.”)

  The assessment highlighted four mismatches

  and tensions:

  Format Selection In spite of the business goal of driving long-term development of new product

  lines or new businesses, the company’s preferred

  collaboration format was contract research.

  Contract research is a good match for short-term,

  incremental problem-solving but not for driving

  long-term development of new business lines.

  Focus Areas The company had no central process for selecting focus areas that were aligned to its

  innovation priorities. Instead, the focus areas

  were selected at the business-unit level, which led

  to narrowly scoped projects that weren’t aligned

  with primary business goals.

  Partnership Selection Although the company was focused on long-term development of new

  product lines or new businesses, it gave low priority

  to “entrepreneurial culture” in its criteria for select-

  ing university partners.

  Partnership Evaluation The company did not have a KPI that was useful for evaluating the impact

  of projects in the partnership and the creation of

  new product lines or new businesses.

  We then asked the university-relations managers

  from the company to come up with tentative solu-

  tions to address the mismatches and tensions, and

  to write the solutions on the canvas. They priori-

  tized sponsored research and hackathons, with the

  expectation that hackathons could inform new

  projects that could lead to new business creation.

  As for selection criteria, they decided to still give

  the top priority to “familiarity” but also decided to

  give “entrepreneurial culture” a higher priority

  than “scientific excellence.” In selecting focus areas,

  university-relations staff wanted to create a central-

  ized call for proposals (funded, if possible, by the

  CTO) as a way to drive more sponsored research

  projects and hackathons within areas they thought

  would impact several business units. Finally, they

  decided to create a KPI measuring the number of

  new product lines or new businesses based on joint

  research projects.

  ADDITIONAL RESOURCES �To download a copy of the university partner- ship canvas form or view examples of completed forms, visit the online version of this article at http://sloanreview.mit .edu/x/59205.

   

   

  SLOANREVIEW.MIT.EDU WINTER 2018 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 79

  In another example, a global technology company

  wanted to reprioritize its business goals from primar-

  ily short-term, incremental problem-solving toward a

  focus on systematic exposure to new business ideas

  and research-based startups, talent acquisition, and

  long-term development of new business lines. The

  company first assessed its current approach to uni-

  versity partnerships by using the canvas. It then

  inserted the reprioritized business goals and against

  this background worked through the rest of the

  questions to explore the impact of the revised goals

  on its approach to university partnerships.

  When working through the questions on the can-

  vas, the company realized that the change in business

  goals had a profound impact on its approach to uni-

  versity partnerships. Executives saw that they would

  need to (1) set up internal processes to make sure

  that the focus areas for university partnerships are

  aligned to the overall R&D priorities of the com-

  pany, (2) apply resources to startup scouting and

  hackathons, (3) expand their set of knowledge

  brokers embedded in their preferred regional inno-

  vation ecosystems, and (4) develop KPIs that

  measure investments in startups and the number of

  ideas (from sources such as hackathons) that lead to

  the development of new product lines.

  Unlocking More Value Partnering with universities in innovation ecosystems

  can be challenging, but the university partnership

  canvas can help companies develop a systematic

  approach to their interaction with universities, thus

  enabling both parties to unlock more value and

  pursue a more strategic approach for ecosystem en-

  gagement. In our view, companies shouldn’t use the

  canvas just as an internal tool for assessing and devel-

  oping their approach to university partnerships. They

  should also use it in their ongoing dialogues with uni-

  versities. In this way, the canvas can be a tool that

  corporations and universities use together to create

  transparency about the goals, formats, KPIs, and or-

  ganizational structures of the partnerships under

  consideration for further development.

  Lars Frølund (@LarsFrolund) is a visiting fellow at the MIT Innovation Initiative. Fiona Murray (@ Fiona_MIT) is the William Porter Professor of Entre- preneurship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and codirector of the MIT Innovation Initiative.

  Max Riedel is a consultant on university relations for Siemens AG in Munich, Germany. Comment on this article at http://sloanreview.mit.edu/x/59205.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  We would like to thank the following people for giving us insights into university relations and for many productive discussions (presented alphabetically by affiliation name): John Westensee and Anette Miltoft from Aarhus Univer- sity; Louise Leong and Joe de Sousa from AstraZeneca; Nicole Eichmeier and Mirjam Storim from BMW; Ciro Acedo Boria, Alberto Lopez-Oleaga, and Manuel Martines Alonso from Ferrovial; Michel Benard from Google; Ales- sandro Curioni and Chris Sciacca from IBM; Karsten Keller from Nitto Avecia; Søren Bregenholt and Uli Stilz from Novo Nordisk; Kate Barnard and Mark Jefferies from Rolls-Royce; Rajiv Dhawan from Samsung; Najib Abusalbi from Schlumberger; and Natascha Eckert from Siemens. Finally, we would like to thank the participants in the semi- nar “Success Factors for University Partnerships,” who tested our university partnership canvas and gave us very valuable feedback.

  REFERENCES

  1. An example of the partnerships is the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. See http://mitibmwatsonailab.mit.edu/.

  2. M. Perkmann and A. Salter, “How to Create Productive Partnerships With Universities,” MIT Sloan Management Review 53, no. 4 (summer 2012): 79-88.

  3. D.E. Sanger, “Corporate Links Worry Scholars,” New York Times, Oct. 17, 1982, www.nytimes.com; and University of Oxford Department of Engineering Science, “Celebrating 25th Anniversary of the Rolls- Royce University Technology Centre in Solid Mechanics,” n.d., www.eng.ox.ac.uk.

  4. Perkmann and Salter, “How to Create Productive Partnerships.”

  5. “The University of British Columbia and Cisco Collaborate on Smart+ Connected Buildings and Smart Energy,” press release, May 27, 2013, https://newsroom.cisco.com.

  6. E. Redden, “From Beijing to Puget Sound,” Inside Higher Ed, June 19, 2015, www.insidehighered.com.

  7. Siemens, for example, has created an organization of internal and university-based relationship managers to run their strategic programs (Centers of Knowledge Inter- change, or CKI) with universities. For an example of a CKI university and some activities of the program, see http:// cki.rwth-aachen.de/en. More information is available at www.siemens.com.

  8. The “university partnership canvas” is inspired by the “business model canvas” developed by A. Osterwalder and Y. Pigneur in their book “Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Chal- lengers” (New York: Wiley, 2010).

  i. See http://reap.mit.edu.

  Reprint 59205. Copyright © Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2018. All rights reserved.

   

   

  Reproduced with permission of copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

   

  • boilerplate.pdf
    • Winter 2018 Issue
    • What to Expect From Agile
    • What to Expect From Agile
      • About the Research
      • Why ING Adopted Agile
      • Lessons From ING
        • About the Author
        • References
  • 59205c.pdf
    • Winter 2018 Issue
    • Developing Successful Strategic Partnerships With Universities
    • Developing Successful Strategic Partnerships With Universities
      • About the Research
      • From Ad Hoc to Strategic Partnerships
      • Preparing for Systematic Engagement With Universities
        • A Variety of Industry-University Collaboration Formats
        • Assessing Partnerships With Universities
      • The University Partnership Canvas
        • Format Selection
        • Focus Areas
        • Partnership Selection
        • Partnership Evaluation
        • Tech Company A’s Completed University Partnership Canvas
        • Tech Company B’s Completed University Partnership Canvas
      • Unlocking More Value
        • About the Authors
        • Acknowledgments
        • References