One Question One Answer: Academy-Industry Collaboration Platform

Collaboration between academy and industry is a desired activity by parties from both domains. However, in practice, there are various challenges that hamper the collaboration which includes differences in motivations, goals, benefits and language as well as allocation of costs of collaboration to the parties. The importance of the topic can be supported by the accelerating attempts to increase the number of collaborations between academy and industry though international and national funds and programs. The traditional instruments for bringing the parties together and facilitating communication has been the official meetings, panels, seminars which are heavy-weight processes and are subject to time, location and cost constraints. Alternatively, there are several centralized and private databases operated by third parties (typically by government agencies) that maintain research related information about researcher and industry partners; however, they have limitations in terms of public accessibility, population and accuracy. In this project an online platform that facilitates academy-industry collaboration by improved on-line communication medium is proposed. The communication quality of the platform will be based on an open, direct, instantaneous, location and time independent exchange of profiles, interests and specific calls of each user from any domain. The platform will operate on the internet and will have a responsive design which can be accessed by internet browsers on various devices such as smart phones, tablet devices and PCs. The platform will have query and reporting features so as to support understating trends in collaboration and the analysis of collaboration activities (e.g., most active collaboration topics, industry, research fields, etc.) After the successful implementation of the project pilot trails will be conducted by making the system available to selected universities including Atılım University and several industry partners from selected industries (e.g., chemicals, software). Following the improvements based on the trial findings, the platform will be made available to public and an increase in the count and quality of collaborations is expected.