University-Industry Collaboration

Universities and industry have long worked together to develop innovations that are commercially viable. Such collaborations are essential to advancing innovations that produce social, economic, and often life-saving benefits. The Kauffman Foundation funds University-Industry Collaboration initiatives that help overcome obstacles to partnerships and generate productive solutions that enable the nation’s leading academic institutions and corporations to work together to address for some of the world’s greatest challenges.

Initiatives

  • Getting new treatments and cures to patients more quickly is the goal of a unique life science proof-of-concept model that draws support from higher education, philanthropy and industry experts to move medical innovations from the lab to the market.

  • The Kansas City Life Sciences Fund, which received an initial contribution of $1.5 million from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, will enable donors across the region to help Kansas City recruit top medical research talent focusing especially on cures for cancer and diabetes.

  • Science Commons, an organization that designs strategies and tools for faster, more efficient Web-enabled scientific research, identifies unnecessary barriers to research, crafts policy guidelines and legal agreements to lower those barriers, and develops technology to make research data and materials easier to find and use.

  • Women Innovators
    View video.   

    The Kauffman Foundation is working to unleash the latent scientific wealth of female scientists, ensuring that they have the support networks and financial means to start businesses and advance their innovations.

Highlights

  • A Kauffman Foundation study demonstrates the critical role universities play not only in fostering innovation and entrepreneurial growth, but in stimulating the much-needed recovery in regional and global economies.

Featured Resources

  • The Engineering Advisory Committee Subcommittee on Industry-University Partnerships issued a report, Encouraging Industry-University Partnerships, that recommends strategies to strengthen National Science Foundation efforts to encourage industrial partnerships that advance research and promote technology innovation.

  • This analysis provides valuable insights into how proof of concept centers can facilitate the transfer of university innovations into commercial applications.

  • University EntrepreneurshipThe report surveys and synthesizes the entire field of university entrepreneurship research over the past 25 years by analyzing all the academic journal articles published in the time period in great detail, and it derives an integrative framework to guide future research.