Improving Industry-academic Relationship from a Science Technology Park

Private organizations are using several well-established strategies to manage innovation in-house and also to monitor and transfer know-how from outside of their own box. Specially, large organizations are working in an Open innovation culture and methodologies trying to co-develop new products and services together with entrepreneurs and academics. However, an unmet need is still not really achieved: How to align your innovation challenges (ideas, opportunities, projects, people) with the management of potential external know-how. Precisely, the relationship between the academic sector (where this external know-how is mainly allocated) and private sector is remaining unclear in many cases and fully productive for both sectors. The academic sector is willing to create innovative ways to improve this relationship in order to optimize technology transfer. Because of that, at the Ciudad Politécnica de la Innovación (CPI), we are developing novel initiatives to engage our know-how with the private sector: TBI and CPI2020. TBI is a unique hybrid model that combines innovation consulting firm practices with technology transfer execution. CPI2020 is an initiative addressed to help the academic community to surpass the EU funding (Horizon 2020) barriers that requires private-academic proposals in most cases.