EURAXESS Employer engagement toolkit

Joint research is a system by which common research themes are proposed together from private companies and academic institutions (universities, and public research institutes), with research teams from both sides participating.

Joint research between academia and business and the commercialisation of R&D results are very closely linked, with the commercialisation of R&D results normally being the next step to joint research.

Key benefits

Benefits for researchers at public research institutions:

Access to real data
Boosting the impact of research results
Opportunity to utilise your expertise to solve real, tangible problems
Increased understanding of the needs of the business and the chance to identify new avenues for collaboration
Increased employability of researchers beyond academia

In the case of the business partner:

Access to unique expertise beyond its own resources
Information on emerging, less codified trends in certain leading-edge fields
Identify further collaborations

Key challenges

Largely dependent on existing funding programmes
Co-funding is generally required from the side of the company
IPR issues may need to be considered in case the collaboration leads to the commercialisation of R&D results. IP position should allow further academic and collaborative research,and avoid impeding the dissemination of the R&D results. The guidelines should be clear at an early stage, even before any commercialisation of R&D results is started.
Measuring impact (e.g. co-authorships are likely to be under representative)

Additional information

You can read more about some joint researcher funding programmes below:

EIC Pathfinder is a funding programme under the European Innovation Council (EIC) that supports visionary research and innovative ideas with the potential to create new markets and address global challenges. It targets high-risk, high-reward projects by providing substantial financial support to multidisciplinary research teams, enabling them to explore novel concepts and transform scientific discoveries into pioneering technological advancements. EIC Pathfinder fosters groundbreaking innovation by bridging the gap between advanced research and the early stages of market readiness.
EIC Transition is also a funding programme within the EIC designed to help innovators and researchers transition their breakthrough technologies and ideas from the research stage to the market. It supports projects that have successfully demonstrated proof of principle in the lab and are now ready to advance towards commercialisation. EIC Transition provides funding and business acceleration services to develop business plans, validate technologies, and attract investors, facilitating the transformation of promising research results into viable products, services, or solutions with significant market potential.
EIC Accelerator supports small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), including startups, with high-risk, high-potential innovations. It provides substantial financial support in the form of grants and equity investments to help these companies scale up and bring their breakthrough technologies to the market. The EIC Accelerator focuses on fostering market-creating innovations and offers coaching, mentoring, and access to a network of investors and partners. This programme aims to boost the growth of innovative companies and enhance Europe's global competitiveness in cutting-edge technologies.
The BRIDGES programme provides financial support for industry partnerships between public research institutions in Luxembourg and national or international companies.
FUSION is a funding programme by the Malta government aimed at: raising the level and profile of locally funded research; ingraining research and innovation at the heart of the Maltese economy; spurring knowledge-driven and value-added growth; sustaining improvements in the quality of life.
The Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) manages the Innovation Voucher, a funding instrument designed to help SMEs in Austria to start ongoing research and innovation activities.

Learn how other institutions incorporate joint research as part of their activities with business

Christian Doppler Research Association

Royal Society

Science Foundation Ireland

When we speak of the commercialisation of R&D, we refer to effectively exploiting publicly funded research results with a view to translating them into new products and services. This normally happens in three possible ways:

Academic institutions transfer inventions via the sale, transfer or licensing of IP, often on an exclusive basis, to existing firms or to new ventures (e.g. academic spin-offs)
Contract or collaborative R&D whereby academic institutions are solicited by business actors to find solutions to production and innovation problems
Commercialisation of R&D can come linked to entrepreneurial channels in the shape of start-ups, incubators and accelerators.

Key benefits

Secure additional research funding and encourage the creation of new start-ups
Greater interaction between public research and business to increase the social and private returns from public support to R&D.
Attractive element for students, scientists and funders, in particular from the private sector and at international level.

Key challenges

Academia needs to disseminate research outputs effectively (either to showcase possible inventions to transfer or to give visibility to research expertise suitable for contract or collaborative R&D)
The active engagement of public research organisations in IP management and knowledge transfer is essential. This includes challenges at several levels:
- The promotion towards faculty and student research and IP ownership model: “professor’s privilege” (granting academics the right to own patents) vs institutional ownership (which should still include incentives to disclose, protect and exploit their inventions, such as royalty sharing agreements or equity participation in academic start-ups)
- Balancing IP protection with the need to maintain public access. Although quantitative studies tend to show that patenting has led universities to conduct more applied research. However, by making university research more responsive to the economy, is there a danger that basic research will suffer?
- Limited availability of technology transfer professionals. Need to generate targeted support for IP management at PRIs through funding, guidelines and skills training.
- Enhance the coherence of their respective ownership regimes as regards IP frameworks to facilitate cross-border collaborations and knowledge transfer in R&D.

Building the required institutional capabilities at universities and public research centres is central to public efforts to commercialise public research. In this sense, many countries have supported the development of technology transfer and licensing offices (TTOs/TLOs) within academic institutions. Make sure to liaise with such units.
Incentives for the commercialisation of R&D are set at the institution level, but national guidelines can help bring about coherence and the sharing of good practices.
The entrepreneurial options imply the adoption of mentoring and training for academic entrepreneurs, funding, spaces (e.g. incubators) and policies to promote venture and angel capital, government seed funds, or platforms to link angel investors and SMEs. In parallel, there should be efforts for promoting entrepreneurship among the institutions’ staff and students.

More information

Learn how other institutions manage the commercialisation of R&D

Christian Doppler Research Association

Ghent University

Innovation Fund Denmark

University of Oxford

Here we will describe an industrial PhD, usually defined as a three-year PhD project where a doctoral student is simultaneously employed by a private enterprise and enrolled at a university. While admitted to a doctoral programme like all other PhD students, the industrial PhD candidate divides their working time between a business organisation and university, aligning with the needs of the associated research project.

Key benefits

High employability: although there is no guarantee of a job at the end of an industry-based PhD, the money and time invested by the company will help the researcher gain a competitive advantage when openings arise. Moreover, doctoral candidates gain expert know-how in the private sector and learn how to succeed in a business environment. The relationships made and experiences gained during an industrial PhD can also boost their employability.
Bridging science in academia and industry: Universities can receive financial support from the companies involved. On the other hand, companies can develop their human resources by training and supporting the next generation of researchers. They also enhance their competitiveness and innovation through knowledge transfer with universities and research institutions.
PhD candidates can have higher salaries than regular PhD candidates in academia.
Business host organisation can increase its growth and patenting activity.

Key challenges

Getting industry involved, due to a lack of flexibility by the schemes (e.g. for PhD candidates from outside academia having to balance business work obligations).
Getting academia involved, due to a lesser involvement in the implementation of the scheme (e.g. due to the PhD doing most of the research in the business organisation).
Sustainability: giving continuity to the programme so that positions can be offered every year.
Different priorities: it is essential to ensure that the award of a doctoral degree contributes to the advancement of knowledge. From an industry perspective, the priorities of engaging intersectorally mobile researchers include, among others, obtaining the necessary human resources and skills to solve problems, developing new products and processes, and implementing existing solutions more efficiently.

More information

There are different types of professional doctorates and, due to the lack of standard regulation, they have evolved differently in different countries. Find a review here.

There are no common rules at the EU level regulating the matter, and the wording ‘European Industrial Doctorate’ refers to a specific EU programme launched within the framework of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, which consists of a joint doctorate developed between an academic participant (university, research institution and so on) and a company established in two EU Member States.

You can find an analysis of the industrial PhD programme in Denmark here. You can also download the report.

See how other institutions implement their industrial PhD programmes

Innovation Fund Denmark

Royal Society

Academic institutions can offer consultancy services for business organisations based on their knowledge and/or expertise. This service can help industry, government and community organisations in finding solutions to research or business questions.

The exact consultancy services provided will thus depend on the academic organisation’s expertise, but in general, consulting is a way of sharing and applying the wealth of specialist knowledge and expertise that exists within academia. The possible services can include:

specialist opinion;
technical and professional advice;
expert witness services;
independent judgement;
business advice (e.g. in the case of business schools).

Consultancy services can also be very closely linked with the sharing infrastructures, such as state-of-the-art testing and analysis facilities.

Key benefits

Benefits for academia:

Gain up-to-date commercial insights that can inform other research and teaching.
Improved links with the business community.
Additional income to support future academic work.

Benefits for business:

Access skills, expertise and equipment that are not available in-house.
New perspectives on business challenges.
Greater understanding of advances in research.
Relationship building and networking opportunities.
A range of consulting services coming from independent expertise.

Key challenges

We could differentiate two models of consultancy:

Institutional consultancy: The consultancy that is negotiated by the university and where a staff member engages with a client as an employee of the university, thereby benefiting from the full support of the university and its wholly owned subsidiary (if any).
Individual consultancy: The consultancy that is carried out by a staff member as a result of their direct contact or negotiation with a client.

In both cases, the main barriers to overcome would be:

Having detailed and updated knowledge of the expertise housed in the academic institution.
Support from business development team.

More information

If you are thinking about engaging your researchers in consultancy work, check:

Going from a science career to a consulting career

Tips for Making University-Based Consultancy Work

Learn how other institutions manage their consultancy services:

University of Copenhagen

University of Nottingham

The concept of “research infrastructures” is wide. In this context, we specifically refer to all facilities, resources and related services that are used by the scientific community to conduct their research. This includes scientific equipment, instruments, archives, or even virtual infrastructures such as scientific information online platforms.

Various approaches exist for sharing research infrastructures; from opening it up for business use within academic organisations by establishing an access policy, to a more extensive collaboration involving the development of a joint infrastructure with several public and private partners.

Key benefits

Share the cost of the infrastructure among different partners
Use the infrastructure to its full potential (making sure it is not underused)
Stimulate researchers from the academic institution mingling with business organisations
Facilitate joint research among academia and industry

Key challenges

At a broader level, we can compare two possible approaches:

Making fully operational infrastructures open to business

This could require the following:

Identify the research infrastructures your institution has with an overview of the cost, users and current degree of exploitation.

Give the appropriate visibility to the infrastructure offered. This could be within the institution (e.g. institutional web), but also within a wider regional/national map (e.g. the Unique Scientific and Technical Infrastructures in Spain, ICTS). Ideally, the promotion of available infrastructures should go beyond the usual suspects.

Discuss with infrastructure managers what the current access policies for business are (if any). Some possibilities include open public competitive calls for external users, bilateral collaboration agreements, or simply a fee basis.

Provide training for external users to use the infrastructure in the appropriate way.

Building research infrastructures with business partners

When academia and industry have common needs, it can be interesting to work on building a joint co-shared infrastructure. CNRS has recently published a very comprehensive report describing structures like these.

These collaborations are quite structured, with very well-defined boards and collaboration guidelines. A number of decisions need to be made, including those related to mission, funding, governance, ownership and exploitation of results.

More information

Learn how other academic institutions manage the sharing of their research infrastructures:

Christian Doppler Research Association

Science Foundation Ireland

University of Nottingham

A Career Day is an event to help researchers building a career in science. It provides advice and information on how to pursue career development, promote formal and informal networking activities (speed dating or one-to-one meetings with possible recruiters), exposure to other employment options, and training workshops (such as CV drafting or presentations skills). This initiative aims at promoting jobs and growth by providing information on research careers, jobs and funding opportunities, and support services to students and researchers on the ground.

The involvement of local industry and individual stakeholders would be beneficial to contribute with the following examples:

• personal success beyond academia: entrepreneurship, collaborations with industry, or a scientific career in a company;

• companies willing to hire researchers or highly skilled professionals (Future Leaders/talent programmes), SMEs, technology-based companies, pharmaceutical or engineering companies, etc.

Key benefits

Reinforcement of relations between industry and academia.
Exposure of young researchers to other career options beyond academia.
Better preparation of researchers for a labour market beyond academia.
Establishment of professional networks in science.

Key challenges

Defining the programme: Finding funds for this kind of event can be challenging, so a feasible option could be organising single periodic thematic workshops so that logistics are reduced.
Identifying individuals to share their experience: Searching among professors, researchers, or alumni networks can be an ideal starting point.
Identifying local industry interested in hiring researchers or highly skilled professionals: One of the key barriers to intersectoral mobility is based on cultural beliefs. Both business employers and researchers tend to have stereotyped perceptions about the other (e.g. researchers assume that by working outside academia they will lose all of their research freedom, and business employers see academic researchers as being too rigid and specialised in “their field”), so giving the opportunity to meet in person can help overcome these prejudices.
Promoting the programme: Getting good speakers is key, but also attracting the correct audience. Promoting the event and facilitating attendance to the sessions will make the difference (accessible venues, non-working hours, etc.).

More information

You can find here some examples of recent career days for researchers

EURAXESS España Career Days (EUESCADA)
Naturejobs Career Expo
SCI “Where science meets business” events

Learn how other institutions organise career days for engaging with business partners and supporting intersectoral mobility:

Bizkaia Talent

Leiden University

An alumni network in the research context is an association of postgraduates or former students and researchers (i.e. alumni network of a university) or ex-grantees of a given grant.

These networks can be self-managed by their own members. These kinds of networks belong to the so-called “talent networks”, where professionals or people with a common interest stay connected to:

support each other;
have access to professional opportunities;
create a community with common interests.

Alternatively, networks can be run by institutions/organisations, to:

stay in touch with former students or researchers, as they are somehow accountable for their careers and in order to support their life-long learning and professional needs;

have access to a rich source of expertise that can be exploited by the institution in a number of ways.

Key benefits

To facilitate the transition from higher education to the working environment of your alumni and to prove their professional future is also the institution’s responsibility.
To assure that the relationship with your ex-alumni does not end when they graduate (you expand the boundaries of your institution through your ex-alumni).
To have access to a pool of experts linked to your institutions that can contribute with their experience to the development of your curricula (it is a great source of potential keynote speakers for conferences, visiting professors, experts, etc.)
To facilitate networking activities among your ex-alumni (mentoring, alumni events, etc.) and to cultivate a feeling of belonging to a community, social identity and mutual support.
To support inter-sectoral and inter-disciplinary networks.
To identify and support your alumni's long-life learning needs.
To monitor the career progression of your ex-alumni (employment rates, work destinies, salaries, etc.). This information can be very relevant to promote your institution as a good start to future students´ careers and/or to help you adapt your curricula to a very fast-changing working environment.
To establish working relationships with different stakeholders through your ex-alumni.
In some countries, alumni networks are also a tool to help fund Alma Maters.

Key challenges

Although the Internet and the rise of professional and social media platforms have facilitated the management of these networks, the key challenge of an alumni network is launching the initiative. This is what needs to be decided:

Aims of the network: Try to focus on a few objectives that allow the network to take off. Before trying to raise funds for your institution, ensure that your network is reliable and credible.
Benefits and services offered to members: These can include:
- Institutional services (e.g. access to scientific journals and to their premises, such as the library, sports facilities, etc.).
- Job posting (e.g. the possibility to post job offers directly or on their behalf).
- Organising networking activities within the institutions to support the event.
- Webinars, for example on career development or other online services (e.g. applying for a specific funding programme). Most probably, your alumni will be spread throughout the country and beyond, so it is wise to organise online activities.
- Mentoring activities. The alumni network is a great source to find mentors for your industry mentoring activities, as many of your former students will be working outside academia.
Defining the alumni network project by setting milestones and objectives:
- How many members are you aiming for in the first year?
- How fast do you estimate growth?
- Who is going to be in charge of invigorating and updating the network, and with what kinds of activities?
- Are thematic or regional chapters needed?
- How and when to collect feedback from network members?

Estimated budget: There are many different options to create an alumni association and it will depend, among others, on the available budget. As a minimum requirement, you will need a responsible of the network within the institution that makes sure to have an updated network and organises some off- and on-line activities with enough periodicity.
Supporting platforms: There are many ways to digitally support an alumni network. You can use ad-hoc platforms (with emailer services, etc.) in which you have thorough control of the membership, or you can use existing professional networks (e.g. LinkedIin) to create an alumni group.
Promotional campaign: When the network project is ready, make sure you design an attractive campaign to reach the critical mass you need to start organising the planned activities.

More information

The Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA) is a good example of ex-grantees self-managing their own network.Among their objectives is to enhance the flow of knowledge across different countries, sectors of the economy, and scientific disciplines. Also, as mentioned before, they are using the network to support a recently launched mentoring programme.

Alumni Channel Blog: News, links, articles, trainings, etc. for alumni relations, coordinators and professionals.

Learn how other institutions use their alumni networks for engaging with business partners and supporting intersectoral mobility:

Bizkaia Talent

Ghent University

Royal Society

Mentoring is usually described as a relationship between a more experienced and knowledgeable person in an area of expertise (mentor) and a less knowledgeable person (mentee). This relationship is built to support the mentee in their academic career and personal growth.

A mentorship programme is a structured and formal way to establish these relationships between a number of mentors and mentees.

What we propose in this activity is an “industry mentoring programme”, in which a research performing organisation develops a programme to put young researchers in touch with researchers or highly skilled professionals working in industry.

Key benefits

To expose young researchers to other career options besides academia
To help researchers plan their careers more efficiently (as they are more aware of the different paths available for researchers and highly skilled professionals)
To help researchers identify the most requested set of skills and competences in industry
To create a network of professionals linked to your institution
To establish working relationships with local industries

Key challenges

In this section we share some tips to establish a mentoring programme at your institution. Keep in mind, though, that “one size does not fit all”.

Defining the programme and getting the approval of your institution: Put the project together: how many mentor/mentee couples you are aiming at, how long the programme is going to last, how you are going to foster meeting (virtually, physically, with what periodicity), what are the main project goals , what kind of collaborations you will need from your institution, what kind of training you will give to the mentors, how you are going to establish the pairing process, how you are going to monitor and evaluate the programme.
Identifying potential mentors: This is probably one of the most challenging steps of the programme as you will need to actively search for professionals with an interest in working with you. Having a well-established alumni network will help you in this phase. Otherwise, you will need to search for ex alumni or professionals in your area through professional platforms (LinkedIn, Research Gate, etc.), and/or launch a public call. Once you have a good number of expressions of interest and a short profile of each of them (area of expertise, background, interests, etc.) you are ready to move to the next step. Make sure that your pool of mentors is gender balanced and well represented.
Launching a call to search for mentees at your institution: You will need to set up a call using your regular channels. Again, make sure that you do your best to come up with a pool of mentees that is gender balanced.
Pairing process: This is a crucial step of the programme. The procedure needs to be inclusive and diverse, making sure that both mentors and mentees have a say in the pairing process. Processes in which mentors and mentees haven’t had the chance to help select who they want to work with have proved not to perform well. The couples may be a “perfect match” on paper but may have different working or learning styles.
Training mentors: There is general agreement that it is important to give your mentors the basics of mentoring, so that they can perform their work correctly. Each institution will decide how in-depth this training will be but, in general terms, these are some topics you may want to cover:
- Description of the programme and its goals and methodology
- Definition of industry mentor and responsibilities
- Techniques on how to begin and end a mentoring session
- Mentoring techniques and tips (Do’s and don’ts of a mentorship):
- Active listening
- How to comply with the ethics of the programme (confidentiality, free of charge, etc.)
- How to report any misconduct or misunderstanding with the mentee
Running and monitoring the programme: It is important that the programme is correctly monitored by the institution. You will need to facilitate pairing meetings (virtually or physically) and to be reachable for any question from the participants. It is advisable that mentors have access to some sort of mechanism so they can discuss problems in their mentoring relationships and get advice. Likewise, it will be useful to facilitate an exchange mechanism for mentees so they can discuss their experiences.
Monitoring and evaluation: In order to evaluate the success of the programme, it is highly advisable to evaluate its results. Evaluating the impact of training activities is not a straightforward exercise, whereas at the same time essential to improve the programmes. There are a number of theoretical frameworks that can be used to measure impact. In general, it is advised that 4 levels of impact are measured: reaction to the programme, learning impact, impact on the behaviour of participants, and impact on their careers. It would also be useful to know whether the programme has allowed the institution to reach out to industries and stakeholders not reached before.

More information

Learn how other institutions apply mentoring programmes to engage with business partners and support intersectoral mobility:

Academic mentoring is widely spread throughout European universities and research performing organisations. However, mentoring programmes in which academic researchers are put in touch with researchers and highly skilled professionals working in industry is probably not that common.

FOSTERING DOCS: The Spanish Researchers in the United States of America Society (ECUSA) has launched a mentoring programme (Fostering docs) for their young researcher members working in the United States. The programme puts mentees in contact with science professionals working in Spain in academia, industry, science communication or science policy in order to foster their career development. The programme runs for 6 months and based on a virtual communication mentor-mentee. This programme is a good example of how both research performing organisations and civil society groups can run a mentoring programme.

EURAXESS TOP IV: As part of the next EURAXESS H2020 project (EURAXESS Top IV), FECYT will be running an industry-mentoring programme in which we will come up with more in-depth recommendations on how to set up this kind of mentoring programme in your EURAXESS Centre. Stay tuned!

Learn how other institutions apply mentoring programmes to engage with business partners and support intersectoral mobility:

Association Bernard Gregory

Ghent University

Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft Career Centre

Royal Society

University of Oxford

Vitae

	Joint Research	Commercial R&D	Temporary Mobility	Industrial PhD	Sharing job offers	Consultancy for business	Sharing infrastructures	Researcher Career days	Alumni Networks	Industry Mentoring
Association Bernard Gregory
Bizkaia Talent
Christian Doppler Research Association
Ghent University
Innovation Fund Denmark
Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft Career Centre
Leiden University
University of Oxford
Royal Society
Science Foundation Ireland
University of Copenhagen
University of Nottingham
Vitae

EURAXESS Employer engagement toolkit

Joint Research with Business

Commercialisation of R&D

Temporary mobility

Industrial PhD

Key benefits

Key challenges

More information

Sharing information on job offers

Key benefits

Key challenges

More information

Consultancy services for a business organisation

Sharing Research Infrastructures

Key benefits

Key challenges

More information

Career Days

Key benefits

Key challenges

More information

Alumni networks

Key benefits

Key challenges

More information

Industry Mentoring Programmes

Key benefits

Key challenges

More information

Summary of Academia-Business Engagement Case Studies

Joint Research

Commercial R&D

Temporary Mobility

Industrial PhD

Sharing job offers

Consultancy for business

Sharing infrastructures

Researcher Career days

Alumni Networks

Industry Mentoring

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