Collaboration between universities and companies in space industry
Susanne Brown on her internship at Dutch Space, January 2008
“I did my internship at Dutch Space, the largest space industry company in The Netherlands. The internship was in fact a research into the question what factors determine the success of cooperative projects involving universities, public knowledge institutes and space industry. The reason behind this is that such cooperation is currently a hot item on the government’s agenda, as it is supposed to enhance the process of innovation and to benefit the economy. Dutch Space, already involved in several cooperative projects, is interested in the benefits of such cooperation but currently lacks a systematic method to judge the merits of such projects. As a company Dutch Space would like to be better equipped to handle cooperation with universities, in particular to better judge whether cooperation is likely to be successful.
The activities undertaken during this internship were aimed at getting an overview of the current situation concerning these cooperative projects. In particular, an overview of the views of government, universities and companies on this kind of cooperation, the policies in place on this subject, the motivations for entering into such cooperation for both universities and companies, and the factors which influence the success of these projects. We also aimed to get an overview of the literature on this subject. Further activities were geared towards determining the most important success factors, in order to be able to advise Dutch Space on this subject.
As such, the initial activities included reviewing a large amount of websites belonging to government bodies, public science institutes, space companies, universities and specific cooperative projects. Furthermore a lot of relevant documents, originating mostly from the government, were scanned for relevant information. A large scan of literature on the subject of university-industry cooperation was also conducted. Finally, the initial activities also included several interviews with people involved with these kind of projects.
The image conjured up by these activities is that cooperation between universities and industry is indeed beneficial for innovation and economic competitiveness. However, the Dutch government does not seem to have a clear, coherent policy on this subject, unlike the Finnish government for example. Whereas some companies are clear in their motivations and policy concerning this kind of cooperation, Dutch Space and its mother company are not. Furthermore, the universities do not seem to have an explicit policy for cooperation at all. The strongest reason for universities to participate in this type of interaction seems to be that it can contribute to financing. As far as the literature is concerned, articles discussing the precise factors which determine success are somewhat scarce.
In the end, a list was made of motivations and success factors based on the literature as well as on the interviews concerning specific projects. From these different factors a final list of success factors was compiled. In this list factors were distributed over the five categories strategy, time, finance, quality of the project and quality of the relationship. Analyzing the importance of each of these factors on the success of each of the projects studied during this internship led to the conclusions that all factors were indeed very relevant. The most important factors were determined to be those associated with strategy, quality of the project and quality of the relationship. This turned out to be in accordance to the literature on this subject. The great importance of relational factors, such as trust and commitment, for the success of a project was an especially interesting conclusion.
These findings resulted in an advise towards Dutch Space to continue seeking out cooperation with universities and/or public knowledge institutes, using the compiled list of success factors as a sort of checklist to judge the likeliness of success for such projects. The list can be used to check whether or not a project meets certain criteria in a positive manner, and whether or not measures should be taken in order to ensure certain factors won’t cause a problem.
Hopefully these results will indeed help Dutch Space in future cooperative projects and will spur internal debate at Dutch Space, eventually leading towards a clear policy regarding cooperation with universities.
On a personal level, this internship has contributed to my personal skills, particularly in analysing large amounts of information and managing a project, in the sense that it had to be completed on time. Furthermore, it also gave me the opportunity to learn a lot on the nature of space industry and in particular the nature of cooperative projects. It also gave me experience in working in a business environment, which I expect will prove valuable in my future career.
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