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University-industry research partnerships work best to solve particular types of problems under specific circumstances. These can include when a sponsor cannot easily create a multi-disciplinary team for exploring new areas. When the sponsor needs to test an idea or technology for a product and has inadequate in-house resources. When the sponsor needs ideas and inputs that better the product. For developing practices and methods that make an operation more efficient. To create proof of concept prototypes (especially when created for sponsor's software and hardware.) And always when the needs reflected in the project are clearly felt by the sponsor at the grassroots and the executive level and by the university partner.
Successful partnerships require active and frequent interaction between the industrial sponsor and the university research group. People transfer technology. A successful transfer is characterized by the use of the new technology in the industrial setting, in order to get people to use it they have to believe in it - and to own it - this can be facilitized by having champions for the new technology and those champions will be the people who have worked on the project. Active involvement on the university side means faculty and graduate students spending time "in context" at the industrial site, summer internships are excellent for students in this situation. It is also helpful for the industrial partners to spend time in the university setting to experience the realities of the research environment. Along with active involvement and buy-in from the industrial side, these kinds of projects take TIME. The personnel working from both sides of the partnership need time to build a working relationship and the university partners need time to understand and internalize the problem to be worked on. Multi-year projects (at least 2 years long) can be expected to be much more successful than one year or charity grant projects.
From the university side professors and students need to have an understanding of the sponsor company's culture and strategies. In particular they need to understand how what may seem like unreasonable restrictions to their research are arrived at by the company and why they are important to their sponsor. The industrial sponsor side must understand that a university is not a production shop, universities do not have the facilities, training or resources to produce hardened technology. The best projects are those in which the industry has a problem that requires in depth analysis, creative problem solving, and outside experience and points of view. As a result of the collaboration industry can expect new data on the problem, proposed solutions, and working prototypes.
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