Lessons Learned on Research Co-Creation: Making Industry-Academia Collaboration Work

Abstract

How to increase the impact of software engineering research in the software industry and the society at large is a critical yet perplexing question to answer. Constrained by curtailed communication between researchers and practitioners, research conducted in a vacuum, or the publish or perish mindset, research collaborations between industry and academia often fail to deliver on the promise of creating a meaningful impact for practitioners. In an attempt to address these circumstances, this paper gives insights on applying research value co-creation to industry-academia collaboration in software engineering. We observe that the core of co-creation includes commitment, continuous engagement and alignment, aiming to produce value for both sides. Further we contend that co-creation has the potential to bridge the acknowledged research-practice collaboration gap through participative knowledge generation. Our experience stems from an eight-year long large collaborative project between a research organization and Norwegian software industry and public sector services. We suggest that for achieving research impact one needs to rethink the way industry and academia engage in and run collaborative projects. Traditional technology-transfer workflows where research is created in a lab and then pushed to industry practice do not stand the best chance of success. Instead, co-creating research with all stakeholders is likely to bring about the best research impact.