GSCOP RUB Production 2022

Thèse Hezam HAIDAR

Auteur : Hezam HAIDAR
Directeur de thèse : Jean François BOUJUT
Co encadrante : Karine SAMUEL
Date : 14 décembre 2021
 
An investigation of university-industry collaboration for early stage development projects


University-Industry Collaboration (UIC) is seen as essential engine of local economic development, where it helps in accelerating the process of innovation through the collaboration. This collaboration goes through different stages, from basic research to Proof of Concept to commercialization activities. However, the upstream part of the process is under-researched, little is known about initiating and establishing the collaboration and then conducting the operational activities such as generating, consolidating and testing ideas in order to build proofs of concepts. The purpose of this study is to explore and systematically describe the relevant characteristics of different aspect of the early stage development UIC from initial conditions to eventual outcomes. The in-depth analysis of multiple collaboration aspects will then be used to develop a comprehensive framework encompassing various components of the UIC at different stages. This a qualitative study, started by conducting a systematic literature review to identify UIC collaboration’s factors that lead to initiating the UIC. The identified factors were considered as the predetermined themes for conducting semi-structure interviews to describe the early stage development collaboration in depth. Data collection was in four different engineering schools of Grenoble INP (Institut d'ingénierie et de management de l'Université Grenoble Alpes) and eleven companies based on industrial projects collaborations. The collected data was processed using NVIVO through an iteration process and two coding cycles.
The contribution of this study is related to three main parts: Characterizing UIC, UIC conceptual framework and Evaluating UIC. First part of the contribution, rich description of the relevant characteristics of multiple aspects of the early stage development UIC. Second part of the main contribution of this study, we developed a UIC framework based on three stages: “before the collaboration”, “during the collaboration” and “after the collaboration”. Each stage includes different components of the collaboration. Third part of the contribution, we developed a measurement system that evaluates the progress as well as the success of the collaboration. This measurement system is based on three sets of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), each set corresponds to a stage of the collaboration. The sets are a combination of quantitative and qualitative KPIs. The measurement system and the KPIs sets were validated through two projects. Despite the broader applicability of the proposed tool (framework and performance measurement), however the purpose of this tool in this study is to improve the effectiveness of UIC. It is a twofold purpose:
- The framework will help to guide building university-industry relation by guiding the actors at different stages while considering various elements in each stage.
- Evaluating the progress as well as the success of the collaboration taking into considerations the different factors that might have positive or negative impact on the collaboration.