Monthly Open Innovation Webinar Series on Building Strategic Relationships Between Industry and Universities

NESTLE and IBM
Tuesday, September 8, 1:00-2:30pm ET (10:00-11:30am PT)

Speakers:

Helmut Traitler
(V.P. Innovation Partnerships, Nestle)

Dawn C. Tew
(Program Director for Collaborative Research Initiatives, IBM)

This webinar series is about how companies work or want to work with universities to create value for both themselves and the universities. The ecology of innovation is undergoing a profound change where a collaborative set of activities need to effectively connect academic institutions with the business community. Universities are becoming key sources of discovery and are playing an ever increasing role in how industry innovates. Global competition, rising R&D costs and thus the need to get more products to the market sooner are some factors forcing companies to reach out to research universities for new ideas and capability. Licensing, corporate sponsored research, consulting engagements, venture capital investment, gifts, and employment are just some of the ways used to build strategic relationships between industry and universities, and are becoming a regular part of the developing open innovation environment.

Helmut will discuss the challenge of creating innovation partnerships in a large corporation using the example of Nestlé. His initiatives have led to the build up of a network of more than a million researchers worldwide, including science universities, venture capital, strategic suppliers and government laboratories, that supports the 4,500 people in Nestlé Food and Beverages R&D.

Dawn will discuss how in the 21st century, closed in-house collaborative models are evolving to open models and leveraging entrepreneurs worldwide. Today, there is a greater need for industry and academia to find ways to engage more quickly and create innovation that has true global impact. IBM’s OCR program addresses this need by enabling researchers to actively collaborate with faculty and students on a number of strategically defined projects, specifically chosen for their immense societal importance, technical difficulty and need for a collaborative effort. Now in its fourth year, she’ll review collaboration successes, lessons learned and research impact.

Click here to register