The Quadrant Model

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One of the biggest challenges facing a company who wants to work with a university, is to understand the ‘art of the possible’. What type of innovation project, service, or ‘product’, can a university offer? What is the best way to begin? And to continue? What can I expect from a university project (cost, time scale, IP ownership)?

Finding the right person at a university to answer these questions can take a considerable investment of time. Even before finding the right people, you can do some useful homework using a simple tool we have used for the past 10 years or so. This Quadrant Model is a framework that allows you to explore a wide range of collaboration opportunities with a university. It is designed to provoke conversations and identify winning forms of collaboration.

The Quadrant Model defines four different types of company-university activity:

Service. These services are often delivered to a company from pre-existing capabilities at the University, such as data processing or specialised measurement equipment.

Consulting. In these projects, the university provides expert advice on a proposal, topic, or challenge, based on the university’s existing knowledge in a specialist field.These engagements are best kept short (10 days or less), and are of highest value when they are framed around a few well articulated questions.

Contract discovery. These projects are more significant in scale and scope. They are generally fully-funded by the company and are designed to undertake a detailed research activity in a specific field or technology area. The aim of these projects is to create new to the world knowledge, and commercially valuable Intellectual Property.

Co-creation. These projects are designed to co-create new capabilities through a partnership arrangement. Usually they will be part funded by a company, with the remainder of funding coming from government grants. Before starting the project, the routes that will be used to allocate IP ownership and exploitation, will be pre-agreed.

Chapter 14 of the playbook.