Securing Commitment in Inter-Organizational Collaboration for Innovation: Governance and Functioning of Industry-University Strategic Partnerships

We develop the concept of “commitment regime” as the organization and coordination mechanisms that govern the ability to secure commitment from participants towards the goals of a high-risk inter-organizational innovation partnership. We focus on the commitment by both university professors and company scientists to complex and uncertain research and development requiring close collaboration not typically found in either university or corporate settings. The most important dimensions of a commitment regime are the nature of the formal contract, the relational governance, and the interplay between these. Our findings suggest that in different types of industry-university partnerships – which we call “tapping in”, rights-oriented, and translational research partnerships – different constellations of formal and relational elements present various opportunities and challenges to generate different levels of commitment from industry and university participants towards the goal of the partnerships.