How a research university supports university-industry collaboration

In the past decade, market pressures and decreasing U.S. federal budgets for science and technology have led to a fundamental change in expectations for corporate investments in innovation. The trend to significant, sustained corporate research collaboration with major academic centers has called for rethinking the balance between academic and corporate roles in these relationships. The Georgia Institute of Technology has developed a system-focused strategy for transformational research focused on grand challenges in areas of importance both to faculty and to industry collaborators. A model of an innovation ecosystem is used to guide both research and university-industry collaboration. The paper describes the strategy, the model, and the results to date including the benefits both to university research and industry collaboration. Key lessons learned are presented based on this experience.