Academia-industry collaboration: Getting closer is the key!

Abstract

Our greatest developers in industry do not typically view top researchers in academia as people who they can learn particularly much from, and our top researchers in academia do not typically view top developers as people who can contribute much to their research (except supply them with raw data). While researchers have spent years on post-university studies to learn the profession of data collection, data analysis, and data sensemaking, developers are trained to produce and deliver in time based on current best thinking. Taking different paths after the university studies soon ends up in different governing variables for developers and researchers of what brings value. This is a well-known phenomenon, and numerous articles and books are describing why this is the case (Barnes et al., Eur Manag J 20(3):272-285, 2002; Mathiassen, Inf Technol People 14(4):321-345, 2002; Mora-Valentin et al., Res Policy 33(1):17-40, 2004; Gorschek et al., IEEE Softw 23(6):88-95, 2006; Rombach and Achatz, Research collaboration between academia and industry. In: Proc. Future of Software Eng. (FOSE 07), IEEE CS Press, pp. 29-36, 2007; Van den Ven, Engaged Scholarship: A Guide for Organizational and Social Research. Oxford Univ. Press, 2007). In the Software Center we have found practical ways on how to make developers and researchers appreciate the same values and by that join forces to solve complex software engineering issues. A key instrument is to get close on all levels from steering groups to reference groups and research teams. In the following chapter, we describe how we in the Software Center work in practice to stimulate a close collaboration and what is required to make this work over time.