On building a long-term university-industry collaboration

A smoothly functioning broad university-industry collaboration can pay dividends to both sides. However, typical collaborations are far more limited: it faculty member makes inroads with an industrial company and a stable collaboration evolves that is limited in scope to a specific area of research and practice. Potentially, however, by joining forces, both the university and the industrial company can tap into each others' intellectual assets For the better - and build an economic engine that not only provides grant support to professors, jobs to students, solves immediate design problems for the company, but also leads to innovation, and nucleates small businesses. Such collaboration provides increased revenue to the company and a pool of mature potential students to the university. Unfortunately, such a relationship is not easily evolved, especially when the goal is to achieve and sustain collaborative leadership for the long term. The authors were involved as founders of the collaboration and have continued to study the outcome despite the industrial collaborator moving on to an unrelated environment. After ten years of partial success, some setbacks or outright failures, and now, apparently success, we have experienced much in the art and science of collaborative endeavor. We present our experiences and lessons learnt.