I have never been an "ivory tower" academic. Having worked in the software industry in the 1980s in New Zealand, and having consulted widely on many areas with many companies and government - see Consulting - I have been passionate about working with industry throughout my academic career, and have developed a passion for developing ways to improve industry / academia collaboration in education - both student and practitioner, R&D and research in general.

This is indeed the major focus of my PVC role at Deakin University and was my priority focus in my Dean of School and Head of Department roles at Swinburne University of Technology.

Some of my experiences and initiatives are summarised below. Feel free to contact me to discuss any, and to share your own ideas and experiences.

ICT Innovation Academy

We ran this for several years @ University of Auckland. 1-4 student R&D projects over summer with range of (mostly) ICT companies. A great success. A major aim was to give idea for and foster similar student internship programmes that would be run by partner companies themselves. Several now exist (whether helped/inspired by ICT Innovation Academy or not I am not 100% sure - but its a great thing anyway!!).

Outline of scheme can be found here

Extenda

We ran this for several years @ University of Auckland. Multi-disciplinary teams worked on technology roadmapping projects with SMEs to assist them in product and service futuring, evaluation and resource need planning.

Outline of the scheme here

Centre for Software Innovation

We developed this concept with Auckland UniServices Ltd, the commercialisation and industr R&D arm of the University of Auckland - by the way, the best such model of University commercialisation/industry engagement I have yet come across!

Outline of the CSI concept here

NICTA/Swinburne Software Innovation Lab

We developed this concept from the earlier SUCCESS (Swinburne University Centre for Computing and Engineering Software Systems) research centre's R&D Software Group, itself developed form combination of Kon Mouzarkis's ITIG (Information Technology Innovation Group) and Auckland UniService's CSI. NICTA CEO Hugh-Durrant White, myself, Kon, Raj Vasa and Antony Tang developed the SSI Lab concept with the support of Prof George Collins and Prof John Wilson to try and leverage these complimentary approaches, as well as incorporate NICTA summer scholarships, industry-linked PhDs.

Some info can be found here and here.

Contact me for more details.

ICT Cafe

We ran this several times - networking events for ICT industry targeted at different levels of practitioner featuring a range of topics e.g. IP protection incl defense against patent trolls :-) ; commercialisation strategies ; VC fundraising strategies ; HR for ICT companies ; government R&D support scheme information sessions ; and so on.

I'd love to run again in Melbourne!! We even have the great coffee to go with it... :-)

R&D Internships

ICT Academy was really a form of this. Place students in companies over summer, winter or even during semester and do R&D projects - NOT just D projects! Can be developing demonstrators but also technology assessment, tech roadmapping, service and product scoping, performance engineering, etc.

SSI Lab internships include mentoring by senior R&D engineers ; academic supervision ; practitioner supervision ; payment for students ; and small payment to staff.

Various schemes in New Zealand and Australia have been used to part support these e..g NICTA summer scholarships, Technology in Industry fellowships, Technology Accelerator Scheme, and - I hope - more will in the future!!

A great way to foster small R&D industry / academia projects to get to know each other.

Industry-based PhDs

I have supervised several PhDs wholly or partially working on industry R&D problems for their PhD. Some, like Christian Hirsh, have gone onto start and run their own innovative software companies. Dr Miao Du has 5 patent applications from her PhD with CA Labs! Dr Richard Li - who ran the ICT Innovation Academy while a PhD student - is Chief Information Officer at Bay Of Plenty District Health Board in New Zealand.

Key things need to do to make these a success IMO:

• challenging R&D problem(s)

• close collaboration - ideally student in company AT LEAST half the time

• industry practitioners come to Uni lab occassionally

• academic supervisors go to company regularly

• project has mix of short-term goals/benefits to company, but long-term research & R&D challenges

Project Showcases

Showcase events of undergraduate, capstone, Honors, and Masters and PhD research to industry and government audiences. The ones we ran for Electrical and Computer Engineering department University of Auckland were excellent!

An example here.

Incubators, Entrepreneurship schemes

Just see the ICEHOUSE and ask CEO Andy Hamilton for advice! Best one I have seen yet. Well done Andy and team!!

See the Velocity entrepreneurship challenge (previously SPARK) programme @ University of Auckland.

Meetups and other Fora

Its essential to meet and network and brainstorm!