How to foster a culture of collaboration between universities and industry

By Sara Jones and Stephen Clulow. For universities that are able to surmount the challenges and costs of collaborating with industry, there are many ways to begin dialogue - from 'sandboxes' to hack days.
We recently ran a workshop, entitled 'Better conversations', at the two week Digital Shoreditch Festival, held in London's 'Tech City'. The festival is celebration of the creative, technical and entrepreneurial talent that is part of the digital economy in that part of London, and our workshop explored the question of how businesses and universities can engage more effectively with each other to solve business problems. Around 80 participants, from both academia and industry, highlighted many of the issues that can make such communications difficult and provided innovative ideas on how academia and business could collaborate more effectively together.