Bringing academic research directly to development: IBM's Centres for Advanced Studies

To stay ahead of competitors and satisfy their customers, corporations are always seeking ways to speed up the transfer of technology into their products and service offerings. Academic researchers are always seeking ways to show the relevance of their work by applying it to industrial problems. The collaborative research model developed and refined by the IBM Centres for Advanced Studies (CAS) over the past 12 years shows how it is possible to bring corporate product development teams and academic researchers together to their mutual benefit. The CAS model originated in the IBM Toronto Laboratory and has since been replicated at other IBM product development laboratories. CAS operations have been established in the United States at the Austin, Texas, and Raleigh, North Carolina laboratories and at a second Canadian site at the Vancouver Innovation Centre.