Promoting Innovation through Industry Partnerships Prof Olawole Obembe

Promoting Innovation through Industry Partnerships Prof. Olawole Obembe Department of Biological Sciences Covenant University, Ota, Nigeria A paper presented at the Executive Advance - 2015/2016 Academic Session For Faculty and Senior Non-Teaching Staff at Covenant University, Ota, on August 3, 2015 Theme: Innovation, Product Development and Nation Building

What is Innovation? • Definition of Innovation: Innovation is the process and outcome of creating something new, which is also of value. • Scope of Innovation: Innovation involves the whole process from opportunity identification, invention to development, prototyping, production, marketing and sales.

The cultural divide between universities and industry • The University Culture: The University generally has a discovery-driven culture. • The industry environment: The industry has innovation-driven environment; which always pushes for new advanced products with better value, cheaper production processes and in some cases cleaner environment.

Basic purposes of industry partnerships • push the frontiers of knowledge • produce a powerful engine for promotion of innovation and economic growth e. g. the Silicon Valley.

Types of partnerships • Long-term strategic partnership is top priority for world-class universities. It influences the university’s future research and a company’s strategy. • Operational partnership is based on joint research projects between universities and industry • Transactional partnership puts significant impact on teaching and learning e. g. between CU and Soft. Com.

Challenge of attracting partnerships in developing economies • Forging partnerships is not easy. • Industry’s expectation is the supply of welleducated human resources rather than production of creative inventions. • Most firms either develop their own technologies or import cutting edge technologies from advanced countries.

What is the way forward? • There is need for a paradigm shift by extending the roles of universities beyond teaching and research to tackling key social challenges and helping drive nation building. • This hopefully will lead to a reversal of the trend.

The CU context • We have made an in-road to forging sustainable partnerships through the informal interaction in June. • We are strategizing to ensure their eventual engagements in our activities.

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