I was recently invited to speak at a seminar organized by IIT, Bombay and Washington University in St. Louis (WUStL) to discuss ways in which corporate leaders can benefit from partnerships of the kind that exists between IITB & WUStL. In this blog, I lay forth my views on a collaboration that has been an endearing thought to me, and some ideas which were expressed by me at the seminar.There is a potent bond, which if nourished well, could creatively transform the corporate world. I am talking about the Industry- Academia bond. Let me first dwell a little on why I feel that the collaboration could hold the key to many of our challenges ahead.
The academic world, by its very nature, is a place that fosters creativity. It provides the inspiration, freedom and space to bring forth new ideas. The industry, on the other hand, gives these ideas direction and a suitable platform to be introduced to the world. There is a need for bright ideas to reach the market and be protected thereafter. Similarly, the industry needs talent and the wisdom of the academia. There has to be a good blend of intellect with commerce. But, for research to be fruitful, focus is very important. And, this is where industry defined projects are of immense help, since they reduce the time to market significantly.
So the next logical question is, how do we accomplish such an alliance. Over the past few years, this collaboration has been gaining momentum and I am aware of many models that have emerged, especially financial. Finance, no doubt, is a very critical spoke of this collaboration wheel. However, there are other not-so-obvious aspects that make such partnership imperative. A recent trend that has cropped up and that to me holds a great deal of interest is Crowd Sourcing.
As part of crowd sourcing, companies sometimes outsource a specific problem or a project to external agencies. The external agency I talk of in the context of this blog is academia. On the one hand the academia gets to exercise their creative faculties, while on the other, the industry gets appropriate solutions.
There have been several instances when gems (ideas) that have revolutionized industry have been conceived in the world of academia. ENIAC (widely acknowledged to be the first successful high speed electronic digital computer) was initiated at a university campus in USA. Facebook, the largest social networking service, was launched while the founders were still on the university campus. The foundation of APPLE too was established in a college campus.
Another important aspect to be considered is the Energy and Environment domain. It needs to be nurtured much in the same way that IT or Communication have been in the past. It brings many faculties to the fore, right from Biotech, Chemistry, Material Science, Engineering to Life Sciences and many more. Often, this in itself is a challenge for companies which are either Engineering, Biotech or Life Sciences Companies. From my personal experience I can tell you that it is very difficult to engage such multifarious skill sets within the same organization. First, talent acquisition becomes an issue and then the infrastructure is a challenge. At Praj, we have to constantly balance out the requirements of each of the streams because we are an amalgamation of biotech, chemistry and engineering. Much of the work can be incubated at the academia level and later ported into the corporate world to ‘take to market’. This is good for the investors too, because they get better visibility. Environment and Energy, especially alternate and clean energy, where much of the developmental work is focused, is not completely understood by the financing world and regulators. The Industry-Academia network can be of tremendous help in bringing concepts into better focus so that the solutions can be better related to business paradigms.
About 75 % of the Indian companies today fall in the MSME sector. Innovation is often slow in such companies as they cannot always attract the right talent. If such companies can prudently bring Industry-Academia partnership into practice, they'll find a lot of viable solutions coming their way, whilst providing the academia a ready opportunity to work on practical problems.
There are more advantages of Industry-Academia collaboration than meets the eye. More and more industries and academic institutions need to adopt this practice. Nurtured well, it has the potential to become a symbiotic relationship that could elevate both the partners and bring more meaningful progress to both.
