Why Industry and Academia need to close the gap between research and productisation – The Hindu

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October 28, 2023 03:07 pm | Updated November 08, 2023 12:25 pm IST
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Awareness and sensitivity towards the other’s priorities and operating environments can help ensure a win-win partnership. | Photo Credit: Freepik
The need for industry-academia interaction for advancement of Science, Technology and its productisation for social welfare and economic growth cannot be overemphasised. Though industry and academia may have different priorities and interests, they need to co-exist symbiotically for their growth and impact. Over the last few decades, there have been successful partnerships but there is a need to institutionalise processes to guarantee successful outcomes.
For-profit industry normally does not take up development below Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 5, as it cannot work on open-ended research without assurance of making a profit. However, industry can invest in academia to work on such problems. First, academia is well-equipped to work on such problems and produce efficient technical solutions; second, not-for-profit academia may not be so averse to negative results as long as they lead to insights into the problem.
Often, academia works on fundamental problems, leading to developing formalisms to understand various phenomena and insights into those or on those that it perceives to be relevant to industry and society. Some outcomes may lead to successful products and technologies. A partnership with industry may not only provide academia the economic, manufacturing, and marketing wherewithal to profitably productise solutions, but may also educate it about problems that industry and society are really interested in.
A key responsibility of academia is to create a readily and gainfully employable workforce, with students imbibing both technical know-how and best professional practices. However, industry should also share this responsibility to help the students know what the industry expects from them. This may not only improve campus placements in higher education institutions, but also provide a ready-to-deploy workforce.
Industry should offer research or consultancy projects to academia, depending on the problem’s TRL. Further, it should get involved with the students much before they graduate by participating in curriculum design and pedagogy and offering short-and long- term internships to train youngsters to work on the problems of industrial interest and provide them an exposure to industrial practices.
To engage fruitfully with industry, academia must create opportunities and incentives for its faculty and students, such as requiring faculty to have regular industrial stints of various durations and collaboration with industry, allowing both short-and long- term student internships, and involving industry in curriculum design and pedagogy.
Industry-academia collaboration in the country seemed to face a barrier, which has begun weakening over the past decade due to the efforts of HEIs, various government initiatives, and industry. This includes setting up research parks, technology innovation hubs (TIHs) in diverse areas, sponsored and executive M.Tech. programmes, and lateral faculty hiring from industry through initiatives such as professors-of-practice. However, these still tap only a miniscule fraction of the enormous potential of academia-industry partnership considering the dense distribution of academic institutes and industry in various sectors. The chasm can be narrowed only if the two parties accept the need for each other and consciously create platforms where they can work together.
Industry operates in challenging and fast-changing scenarios and prioritises products and profits, while academia focuses on education and basic research. Therefore, while engaging with each other, both must have reasonable expectations from each other as well as awareness and sensitivity towards the other’s priorities and operating environments to ensure a win-win partnership.
Samar Agnihotri is Associate Professor-SCEE at IIT-Mandi. Renu Rameshan is Lead Research Scientist, Vehant Technologies.
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The Hindu Education Plus / education / higher education / students / teaching and learning / research / university / universities and colleges
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