SUCCESSFUL ENGAGEMENT IN OPEN INNOVATIONAn Insight into Knowledge Transfer Partnerships for Academics

INTRODUCTION

This study looks at the importance to academia of collaboration with business in open innovation and the benefits of doing this through the Technology Strategy Board’s Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) scheme. Surveying over 4,000 innovation partnerships and interviewing the business and academic partners of 30 KTPs, the study draws on a wide range of knowledge domains and operational research practice. In order to unravel the processes involved in successful knowledge transfer (KT), the study has developed a model of the ideal attributes and outcomes of KT. This model is based on extensive research, including 200 case studies of successful collaborations, as well as international studies of best practice (Cope et. al. 2009; Abreu et. al. 2009; CIHE, 2009). This generic model is used to show in detail how the KTP measures up and offers a best practice approach to open innovation.

This summary report is based on Key Attributes of Successful Knowledge

Transfer Partnerships, by Philip Ternouth, Cathy Garner, Laurie Wood

and Peter Forbes (August 2012). It was commissioned by the Technology

Strategy Board (www.innovateuk.org) and by the Research Councils UK

(www.rcuk.ac.uk). More information about the Knowledge Transfer

Partnership programme can be found at www.ktponline.org.uk

Steering Group:

Dr. Debbie Buckley-Golder Technology Strategy Board Head of Knowledge Exchange

David Way Technology Strategy Board Director of KT and Special Projects

Dr. David Evans Technology Strategy Board Senior Government Advisor

Mark Glover Technology Strategy Board Director of Business Planning

Clare Lindsay Technology Strategy Board KTP Programme Manager

Ian Coates Design Director, Zoeftig Limited

Ryan Maughan Managing Director, AVID Technology Group Limited

Dr. Douglas Robertson Director, Research and Enterprise, Newcastle University

Tony Mitchell KTP Consultant to British Council

Dr. Jarmila Davies KTP Management Board Member, Welsh Government

John Hand KTP Management Board Member, EPSRC

OVERVIEW OF THE KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER PARTNERSHIP

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KTP helps academics engage with British business by providing a structure through which the expertise available within academia can be made available to firms wanting to improve their competitiveness and performance¹. It establishes a relationship between a business and an academic institution that facilitates the transfer of knowledge, technology and skills to which the business partner has no access. In this way, the KTP can be seen to increase the interaction between academic institutions and businesses and raise awareness of the contribution academia can make to business development and growth.

The KTP not only provides business-based training for recently qualified graduates to enhance their business and specialist skills, it also stimulates and enhances business-relevant training and research undertaken by the academic institutions.

In particular, the KTP supports the partners throughout the process and helps them develop the skills and understanding needed for open innovation in both the substantive and managerial aspects. KTP has been shown to be particularly useful for universities wanting to engage with SMEs that do not have sufficient expertise and resources to manage an open innovation partnership.

¹ KTP embraces academics from Universities, FE Colleges and RTOs.

04The KTP process comprises a number of specific value-adding elements that combine to deliver successful outcomes. These include:

• The mentoring role of the KTP Adviser for the business and the Associate (the graduate).

• The role of the Associate and the Adviser in bridging and brokering between the research base and the business.

• The processes of partnership building and reflective learning, which are encouraged by the KTP’s formalised processes.

For academics, KTP offers an additional benefit relating to the new demands placed on them to demonstrate the impact of their work. Today, it is of great importance to researchers that they understand the real nature of the impact process and deliver research that has a measurable effect. Our study shows that KTP, with its iterative structure and multiple feedback loops, offers a best practice strategy for engaging and documenting a defined pathway to impact whilst at the same time supporting the academic drivers of curiosity and robust objectivity.

Before we consider in detail how the KTP offers a good practice model for knowledge transfer, lets us look at the advantages and challenges for universities of working with businesses to further their research and develop new knowledge for the market.

During the past few decades, ideas on innovation have changed significantly. Innovation is no longer seen as a one way process where an academic institution comes up with a new idea, technique or piece of technology, patents it and licenses it to a business, which develops it for the market. This linear technology transfer model has been shown to be a narrow interpretation of the actual processes that generate success (CIHE, 2009). Indeed, academic contributions in industries such as financial services and creative media are difficult to detect using the analytical ‘technology transfer’ framework, leading to false conclusions about the relevance of universities to these modern innovative sectors.

There is now a significant body of evidence that shows a more symbiotic relationship between academic knowledge and innovation where innovation draws on research and, at the same time, the demands of innovation force the creation of new research knowledge (Kline and Rosenberg, 1986). The results of our study contribute further evidence to support this notion of a symbiotic relationship between academia and business in open innovation. Over half the academic partners we interviewed suggested that their collaboration with a business not only enabled them to bring existing research to the partnership, but also gave them the opportunity to develop new research ideas. It also gave them a source of new case studies for teaching as well as a supply of visiting lecturers from their company partners. Several interviewees said that, through the partnership, they were able to develop new field research methodologies, others reported considerable benefit from management techniques learned as part of the KTP. One interviewee highlighted the benefits for the whole region from the KTP programme: ‘At the end of a good KTP, the Associate typically gets a high level job. This brings kudos to the academic department and provides motivation for talented graduates to stay on. This is a key benefit of KTPs in deprived regions like the north east which suffers constantly from a graduate brain drain.’

BENEFITS OF OPEN INNOVATION IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT

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In the UK, the challenges of open innovation were recognised in 2003 when they were highlighted in the Lambert Review (Lambert, 2003). Since then, they have been studied extensively from all aspects of the KT process. One study, concerning the experience of innovation by UK businesses, found that over 65 per cent of surveyed firms saw the greatest hindrance to open innovation as being the long-term nature of academic research (Bruneel, et. al., 2009). Fifty-five per cent cited regulations regarding confidentiality or intellectual property. More significantly, this study suggests that UK trends in academic-industry engagement in innovation may be going in the wrong direction. Between 2004 and 2008, the proportion of businesses citing barriers arising from unrealistic expectations of the university technology-transfer offices (TTOs) increased from 24 per cent to 49 per cent. These results are of particular concern since they reflect the findings from firms that have considerable experience of collaborations with academia.

A more detailed study documented 22 significant firms and the role that academic research played in their innovation (Docherty et. al., 2010). This study noted how the cultures and operational styles of universities and businesses differed. Businesses, being unused to the way universities operate, listed a range of factors that they felt hindered knowledge transfer. These include the following:

• Researchers have limited engagement across disciplines while business solutions require knowledge from different sources.

• Researchers are focused on achieving results that are robust and repeatable although business can cope with 80 per cent solutions.

• The pace of activities differs in academia and businesses. This causes particular problems in SMEs with short innovation cycles and time constraints.

• University TTOs act as barriers rather than facilitators of knowledge transfer. They often have unrealistic expectations of the economic value of the research and hinder the trust-building process.

• A lack of shared expectations creates obstacles and leads to broken trust.

CHALLENGES OF OPEN INNOVATION06

When academics were interviewed about the challenges of knowledge transfer, their perceptions of the barriers matched business perceptions in certain respects and differed in others. Their concerns include the following:

• A lack of time,

• Insufficient rewards,

• Academic bureaucracy,

• A lack of experience in dealing with external partners,

• A lack of skills in external organisation.

Our research shows that the KTP can effectively support partners in overcoming these barriers at every stage of the knowledge transfer process. We will see how it achieves this in more detail, later. (The table on page 18 shows graphically the challenges of KT and how the KTP helps address them). First, however, we will look at what makes for successful innovation, using the generic model of ideal attributes and outcomes of innovation, which we created as part of the research project.

Generic model of ideal outcomes and attributes of KT (5 Cs Model)

It is widely acknowledged that for co-creation to work effectively there is a need for long-term and trusting relationships. Steven Hill, head of policy at the Higher Education Funding Council for England, describes co-creation as being ‘like a rope made out of a number of threads, as strands of expertise are twisted together they become much much greater than the sum of the parts’ (Hill, 2013).

In our generic model of the ideal attributes and outcomes of innovation, we have tried to show how successful innovation processes twist these strands together. We have divided the creative process into five stages, which we describe on the following page.

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Company Opportunity (C1): A business recognises that there is an opportunity or a problem that it could address if it had access to knowledge and expertise in specific areas. This recognition needs to be combined with an awareness that a university or HEI or other academic institution might be the place from which to acquire such knowledge. Furthermore, the potential for a successful project depends on finding the right institution and an academic with the relevant skills within it.

Co-Recognition (C2): Seeds of the partnership begin with a potential match between business needs, appropriate research and willing researchers within an institution. An agreement formalises issues such as intellectual property and delivery conditions. This agreement process will also involve the Technology Transfer Office of the academic institution (TTO) and legal representatives on both sides. Academic benefits of the collaboration need to be clear at this stage or the academic partner may not have the incentive to invest the resources required.

Co-Formulation (C3): The researchers’ generic knowledge is adapted or ‘localised’ to meet the specific needs and opportunities of the business partner’s processes, products and markets. Knowledge from the academic and business domains is synthesised. This requires collaborative working and the building of trust amongst the partners.

Co-Creation (C4): As the project develops, the partners create the opportunity for innovation in process, product or markets. This depends on continuing trust and involvement from the academic partner, as well as the firm’s absorptive capacity and on its ability to deliver.

Commercialisation (C5): For the academic partner, commercialisation of the created process or product is a mark of success. However, there is an additional potential outcome in the form of new research emerging from the project. Furthermore, for the academic partner, the final stage of the generic model involves reflection and follow up. Here, the innovation process mirrors the demands for REF. Indeed, it enables the academic ‘not to predict impact but to engage so that opportunities for impact may be recognised and taken’ (Willetts, D. 2011).

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Figure 1, below, maps out the model framework. It should be noted that, while the 5 Cs Model is presented in a linear fashion, knowledge transfer is not a linear process. Once an innovation project begins, the process of knowledge transfer and exchange may move backwards and forwards through the different stages in an iterative and recursive way. Indeed, it should be expected that as the project emerges, new knowledge will need to be drawn in either from the academic side or the business or both.

Co-Formulation

• Incentives

- Academic / Business

• Collaboration mode

Co-Creation

• Localisation

• Embedding

Commercialisation

• Adoption

• Diffusion

Review

Co-Recognition

• Academic

• Company

Company Opportunity

Figure 1

Generic Process Model for KT in Open Innovation (5Cs).

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Building relationships in which collaborative practices can be realised

Research suggests that the formation of trust-based relationships is paramount to the success of any project (Cope et. al., 2009; Bruneel et. al., 2009). The OECD defines a partnership in the knowledge economy as an agreement to do something together that will benefit all involved, bringing results that could not be achieved by a single partner operating alone (OECD, 2006). The mechanisms of the KTP allow trust to be built up from the beginning (from the awareness-raising stages of the generic model: C1 and C2) and grow throughout the process (C3, C4 and C5).

In seeking to understand how the KTP operates to facilitate knowledge transfer between universities and businesses, it is necessary to understand the conditions and actions that build and maintain collaborative partnerships. Several studies highlight the importance of mechanisms to build trust and the importance of the business being able to absorb and adapt the specialist knowledge produced by universities, its ‘absorptive capacity’. In addition, they underline the importance of individuals who are able to help bridge the differences between the knowledge base and business. (Cope et. al., 2009; Bruneel et. al., 2009)

A recent study suggests that the KTP facilitates knowledge transfer through the establishment of frequent personal interactions between the partners (Gertner et. al., 2011). This interaction focuses around a joint enterprise that gives rise to mutual engagement and the development over time of shared knowledge. By drawing together partners from different communities, the KTP offers opportunities not only for knowledge transfer but also for creating new knowledge as partners and their communities absorb information and give it their own meaning. Indeed, our research shows that the most successful KTPs are those where sufficient time and thought has gone into building the right team.

WHY IS THE KTP MODEL SO SUCCESSFUL FOR OPEN INNOVATION AND SO EFFECTIVE IN BREAKING THE BARRIERS TO KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER?

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A partnership can be described as successful if it:

• Promotes innovation.

• Enhances the impact and effectiveness of action through combined and efficient use of resources.

• Involves a strong commitment from each partner who pursue a shared strategic vision, compatible targets and are equal in a predetermined organisational structure.

• Emotionally binds the persons involved.

• Brings together different actors in collaborative action as well as in collaborative efforts to effect change.

• Enables the co-creation of an intellectual asset (for example a new business process or product development process) under the partners’ control through a deliberate series of actions to embed knowledge as a changed capability.

The KTP involves a mixed team and for such a team to be effective it must develop an understanding of the roles that each member is to perform and the expectations each has of the other. In order for this understanding to come about, the team begins by building a strong sense of collaboration. From this perspective, it is clear why the intervention of the TTO can break the trust-building process since its officers are not involved in the team building efforts. Figure 2, on the following page, offers six key rules for developing good partnerships.

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BOUNDARY SPANNERS: THE IMPORTANCE OF INDIVIDUALS WHO BRIDGE THE TWO COMMUNITIES

HOW ARE GOOD PARTNERSHIPS BUILT?

The value of the Associate role

The KTP model allows the business partner to supplement their in-house resources through an Associate. This role is provided by one or more appropriately qualified graduates, recruited by the partnership, employed by the academic partner but

embedded in the business to work on the project.

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Source: The basis of good relationships (Spence, 2006).

Figure 2 below offers six key rules for developing good partnerships.

1 Look for common ground: find shared values and personal experiences.

2 Learn about others: let them express themselves, consider their perspectives, accept differences, appeal to their highest motives.

3 Critique results not people: make others feel good, be respectful, pay attention and give feedback.

4 Proceed slowly: check for understanding and acceptance before moving to the next idea.

5 Communicate clearly and concisely: speak in a logical sequence, tactfully and with confidence.

6 Share ideas and feelings: pay attention to non-verbal communication and ensure eye contact. (Spence, 2006)

The Associate not only acts as a conduit of knowledge from the academic supervisor but also acts as a knowledge creator through the process of synthesising and developing knowledge from both the academic and business domains. The Associate also operates to instil that newly created knowledge in the business’s employees and processes so that the benefits to the business are sustainable.

The Associate is supervised for one half day per week on the business premises by the academic supervisor, who thus assists the Associate in conveying the knowledge and expertise that the business needs.

The KTP derives much of its effectiveness from the continuity and project focus of the Associate, coupled with their responsibility as a proactive project manager owning the success of the partnership.

The study highlights the importance of recruiting the Associate from outside the firm, rather than being nominated from the business’s existing staff. There are a number of reasons for this:

• A key focus of the KTP is to embed culture change within a firm. Given this priority, someone not ‘native’ to that business environment is likely to be more effective in facilitating change.

• It would be unusual for a business to possess an employee who had the required attributes and could be dedicated to the partnership project. If it did have such an employee it is unlikely that they would need a KTP.

Training and development for the Associate are a key part of the KTP. The study has shown that project-specific training is valuable not only to the Associate as a matter of personal development. It is also important for the partnership in order to facilitate the acquisition and assimilation of the new external knowledge needed to achieve the project goals. The presence of the Associate within the firm also helps ensure that the benefits from the new knowledge are sustained.

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The Adviser is provided by the Technology Strategy Board to support the partnership in the development of its proposal and advise on the managerial aspects of the KT process. Advisers act as mentors in the preparation for and the implementation of KTP projects and specifically focus on managerial requirements. The Adviser can increase the probability of a partnership being successful, through a willingness to make context-dependent interventions, providing support and mentoring. The Advisers perform their roles in a highly discretionary manner, bringing themselves into the partnership where required. Their attendance at Local Management Committee meetings allows them to customise their interventions to an individual partnership.

Advisors are valuable to the partnership for:

• Being an objective authority, trusted by the partners, who can review proposed changes to the project and sanction them on behalf of the Technology Strategy Board.

• Challenging the partners and suggesting ways in which opportunities may be taken or KT problems overcome.

• Mentoring the Associate and protecting his or her agenda against short-term business priorities that might come in the way of the KTP project.

• Ensuring that requirements for Associate training are met and that he or she has access to business and academic staff.

• Bringing new contacts and information to partnerships through knowledge of other partnerships.

• Acting as an interpreter between the worlds of business and academia, ensuring that the partners understand each other.

The value of the Adviser role

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Organisational learning requires reflection and reaction where problems and opportunities are resolved through ‘insightful’ discussions around a real-time problem. Managers and entrepreneurs play a crucial role in building this ‘learning potential’. A critical source of understanding of the nature of organisational learning comes from the body of literature on ‘Action Learning’ (Revans, 2011; Holt and MacPherson, 2006). This literature highlights the importance of moving from ‘talking about doing’ to ‘actually doing’.

KTP is particularly successful at helping partners learn by doing and so overcome the barriers to absorbing new knowledge and putting it into practice. It provides the effective managerial processes that are needed to adapt specialist knowledge into routines and systems so that it can be embedded. The Project Plan is the KTP’s key mechanism for organisational learning and team building. Over half the partnerships studied made the un-prompted comment that the Project Plan was valuable.

It was seen to:

• Offer a structure that stimulates informal contacts but also provides a controlled means of discussing changes to project plans.

• Provide a framework for regular review and reflection, enabling lessons learned to be fed into future planning.

• Encourage learning by doing or ‘action learning’.

• Facilitate accountability and the clarity of roles and also help in partnership building.

• Focus attention on the project through the regularity of contact. Regular attendance by the Academic supervisor is particularly important in this respect.

• Allow wider contacts to be established through the Local Management Committee. This strengthens partnership bonds and enables knowledge to be embedded.

The embedding process is critical to knowledge transfer and the sustainability of benefits for the partnership. As evidence from the most successfully innovating partnerships shows, it is crucial that staff from the business partner invest sufficient effort and time to absorb or embed the knowledge that they have gained.

Importance of mechanisms that build trust and allow organisational learning

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Translation and adaptation of academic knowledge for the business context

Although the onus is on the business partner to absorb the new knowledge created by the partnership, it is the responsibility of the academic partner to communicate the specialist knowledge in a form that is comprehensible in the business environment.

Every field of learning has its codes and systems of shorthand. These codes enable specialist communities to communicate effectively and efficiently, regardless of geographic or linguistic differences. So embedded may the specific terminology be that the individual expert can be unaware of the extent to which it lacks meaning for the outsider. Additionally, in the academic context, there is often a belief that scholarship will be compromised by efforts to translate it into ordinary language.

Nevertheless, our study has shown that for knowledge or expertise from universities to be adapted and absorbed by business for successful innovation, it has to be communicated effectively. Indeed, successful knowledge transfer can be seen to depend on the capability of the academic partner to provide it in a relevant form.

In the KTP, the job of ‘translating’ the specialist knowledge of the academic partner into terms that are relevant and comprehensible to those who are using it in the business context is undertaken chiefly by the Associate or Associates who have an understanding of both worlds. Such people are often described as ‘gate keepers’ or ‘boundary spanners’, in the sense that they span the boundaries between the two spheres (Ternouth, 2011).

Our research shows that where individuals are capable of performing such boundary spanning roles in both the academic institution and the business, the probability of success is higher. To this end, the KTP provides weekly meetings between the Associate and the academic supervisor on the business premises and monthly meetings between the Associate, academic supervisor and business supervisor. While the Associate gains dual membership of the academic and industry communities, the academic and industry partners in the project team act as brokers and ‘boundary spanners’ in the two communities.

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In the last section, we look at the added value of the KTP and how its iterative mechanisms support universities through the creative partnership with business that leads to successful knowledge creation.

Added value of KTP

The key to KTP lies in what one might describe as its ‘holistic’ nature and its lasting value for the academic and the business partner. Every element and process of the KTP, beyond its immediate function, contributes to building a sustainable relationship between the business and academic institution, which is critical for the innovation process.

As mentioned above, those who are experienced in open innovation recognise that considerable effort and investment is required to embed and exploit its outcomes. With the KTP model, energy invested in any element of the scheme, whether it be identifying the partnership team or writing the final report, also contributes to these higher goals. Take, for example, the apparently bureaucratic task of writing the proposal. Time spent at this stage not only ensures a good application, it also enables shared objectives to be developed, trust to be established and team-building to begin. These are the foundation stones of a successful project. Similarly, time spent on planning the project ensures that the key elements for effective KT are recognised and included. The programme enables the KT process to develop in a recursive way and includes numerous feedback loops that encourage reflection. It also enables sustainable increase in absorptive capacity.

So, for example, the preparation and writing of the final report is not simply a funding requirement. It offers a valuable tool for review, which is a critical element in organisational learning and has lasting a value for the partners beyond the intrinsic task. KTP has been shown to increase the absorptive capacity of partnerships because it increases the experience and expertise of each partner.

Table 1, on the next page, sets out the processes and mechanisms of the KTP and shows how they help innovation partners meet the challenges of knowledge transfer and develop operational strategies for success, at each stage of the innovation process.

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18

Barriers to KT described by academics

KTP mechanisms that help break down barriers

Operational strategies for successful KT

KTP processes that support

success

Generic model of ideal outcomes

and attributes of KT (5 C’s Model)

Co-Formulation (C3)

Lack of companies wishing to collaborate

KT offices and adviser outreach, e.g. via knowledge transfer network.

Promotion and Marketing

Knowledge Brokering

KT offices

Adviser

E.o.l

Company Opportunity

(C1)

Academic bureaucracy

KTP model offers best practice processes.

Reflective learning Local Management

Committee

Lack of resources (academic and business)

KTP grant provides funding for academic.

Associate gives business additional capacity during project.

Boundary spanning Academic supervisor

Associate

Adviser

Lack of experience Advice offered by KTP office and adviser.

Action learning Partners working together

Co-Recognition (C2) Lack of experience:

company or academic

Adviser plays mentoring role. Experience gained through application process.

Collaberative partnership formation

Applictaion

Process

Adviser

Lack of rewards

Lack of time

KTP delivers an impact Pathway that does not undermine but supports research.

Team building, establishing trust

E.o.l

Adviser

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How the KTP measures up to the 5 Cs model in addressing the challenges of KT and supporting strategies for success.

Table 1

Barriers to KT described by academics

KTP mechanisms that help break down barriers

Operational strategies for successful KT

KTP processes that support

success

Generic model of ideal outcomes

and attributes of KT (5 C’s Model)

Commercialisation (C5)

Lack of reward Impact agenda rewards Engagement. The final report helps draw out other academic benefits.

Business processes and products re-engineered for innovation (R&D and graduate employees).

Applictaion process

Associate as employee

Increased academic engagement

Co-Creation (C4)

Single discipline focus

Associate(s) as synthesiser(s)

Lack of resources KTP Grant

Associate

Reflective learning Academic supervisor

Final report

Adviser

Organisational learning

Management and employees

Lack of reward Reflective learning

Academic development

Academic benefits

Lack of experience Adviser plays mentoring role.

KTP local management committee processes foster reflective learning.

Knowledge management

Associate

Business Management foster reflective learning

The study has shown that, in the new world of open innovation, engagement with business can bring tangible benefits for the HEIs and further education colleges that go far beyond patents, licenses or academic deliverables such as case studies for teaching. We saw how academics, who have taken part in KTPs, found benefits ranging from new field research methodologies and management techniques to a potential for stemming the graduate brain drain from deprived regions.

The model of the Knowledge Transfer Partnership enables academics to engage with businesses in a sustainable way. Not only does it support the academic research agenda, making it of equal importance with the business’ goal of commercialisation, it offers best practice mechanisms that enable ongoing relationships to be developed between universities and businesses with built in learning processes and feedback loops. We saw how the Local Management Committee, the Project Plan and the final report all offer tried and tested ways of enhancing reflective learning and helping the partnership embed academic knowledge in the business context. These mechanisms are also effective in enabling the partners sustain the knowledge gained beyond the end of the project. The study shows the importance of Adviser and the Associate roles in the KTP model, for ensuring successful outcomes and keeping the project on course. The Associate plays a particularly important role in addressing issues of translating knowledge from a specialist environment into a business context. The KTP is particularly effective in enabling the Associate to synthesise academic expertise with business know-how.

The study has shown how the KTP addresses the potential barriers to knowledge transfer, helping academics develop the skills and experience necessary for working with external partners in a sustainable fashion. It does through the support of the Adviser and through the iterative processes of the LMC meetings and the Project Plan. We have also seen how the KTP offers strategies for trust-building and collaborative partnership-making, which are the key to successful innovation outcomes.

Finally, for the academic, the KTP offers a strategy for undertaking research that, from the outset, factors in and documents the potential impact on society.

CONCLUSION20

ProposalDevelopment

ImplementationFinal

ReportAssociate

RecruitmentE.o.I

KTP+

Co-Formulation Co-Creation Commercialisation ReviewCo-RecognitionCompany

Opportunity

Iterative Processwith Feedback Loops

• Adviser & IT Office as Knowledge Brokers

• Adviser as Boundary Spanner

• E.o.l Process builds team and trust

• E.o.l and Application process & knowledge socialisation role

• Associate and Adviser as Boundary Spanners in process

• Rules of collaboration established

• Associate and Adviser as Boundary Spanners in process

• Company development through Action / organisational learning

• IMC and Adviser - reflective learning

• Associate as knowledge manager

• Company development through Action / organisational learning

• Academic engagement and ‘impact’ abilities

• Application Process

• Business development / increased absorbtive capacity

• Company development through Action / organisational learning

• Associate as employee

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Figure 3

Showing the added value of KTP in terms of the model of ideal attributes and outcomes.

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