Mutual understanding for great collaboration

By Dr Douglas Mckenzie, Chief Executive, Xanthella Ltd.

I had the interesting experience of being one of the panel speakers in the Imax Theatre at Venturefest in Glasgow at the Science Centre earlier this month. I had been invited to talk in a session on SME-university interactions as I used to be an academic who collaborated with industry and now am a business owner collaborating with universities.

Xanthella Ltd (which designs systems for biomanufacture of algae) is my second company and I have tried to apply the lessons learnt from my first company to do everything much better. That includes how we manage our university collaborations. I firmly believe that for early stage SMEs the right collaborations with academics and universities can deliver real competitive advantage.

So what makes a great relationship? I think the key is mutual understanding (isn’t it always?). This starts by both sides knowing what the other party wants and indeed needs out of the collaboration. SMEs almost by definition have scant financial resources and very limited time. They cannot afford to waste either of these commodities. Collaboration must deliver real benefits to the company’s bottom line. This may come in the form of a new USP or intellectual property that will deliver a sustainable competitive advantage.

If you find yourself talking about a collaboration using terms like “strategic” and “blue skies” then perhaps you should think again. Projects need to deliver quickly and thus need to be tightly drawn with clear objectives and deliverables.

Understand the difference between what will be delivered and what the project will aspire to deliver. I like the approach that Innovate UK has taken to its grant proposals where the industrial objectives need to be clearly articulated and the timescales short but realistic. 

Academics have to show ambition when they write proposals for funding but it is crucial that they don’t oversell a project to a SME and that the risks are clearly understood. Failure to manage expectations is probably the most common source of frustration and will damage further collaboration. SMEs do, however, understand the need for a quid pro quo. In business-to-business interactions this is usually financial but in collaborations with universities the financing is often not the main driver. Academics want to build their research groups, have challenging problems and to publish. The SME must understand these motivations and think about how their project will fulfil the need of the academic while delivering on their own objectives. Achieve this and you will have a great collaboration.

What I find a powerful approach is to look for academic groups that have developed a technology in another field and then see how that knowledge could be applied in the SME’s field. This reduces the need to do novel science but does provide novelty through applying existing knowledge to a new field. This can speed things up considerably while delivering useful innovation.

A last thought is to consider how you can build a sustainable relationship with both research groups and universities. Long term relationships built upon a series of short term projects are much more likely to lead to success than a single one off. An early stage SME is also likely to have many needs that can be delivered across a university and these needs will change with time. If universities can develop mechanisms to foster long term relationships then the result will be a win-win for everybody.