The end of dilemmas : joint U-I labs as a collective way to create open innovation in science

While the benefits of university-industry collaborations (UICs) are well-documented, the mechanisms that enable these partnerships to simultaneously achieve scientific discovery and technological invention remain underexplored. This study investigates the management processes of joint university-industry (U-I) labs (Meissner et al. 2022), a distinct organizational model for UICs designed to deliver both academic and industrial impact. Drawing on 40 interviews and extensive secondary data from 13 joint U-I labs managed by the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), we identify the managerial conditions that foster an optimal balance between proximity and independence among academic and industrial stakeholders. This balance emerges as a cornerstone for leveraging mutual benefits, allowing stakeholders to sequentially draw on each other's ideas and resources. The key management conditions include dual institutional embeddedness, annual or on-demand adjustments to the research program, proportional resource contributions, and a progressive selectivity in partner engagement through prior internships and PhD collaborations before establishing the joint lab. Together, these elements ensure that joint U-I labs mitigate typical UIC challenges such as cultural misalignment and conflicting objectives, while maintaining flexibility and fostering innovation and new scientific questions. Our findings reveal four mechanisms underlying the success of joint U-I labs: resource accumulation, administrative simplification, exploration of the unknown, and balancing proximity with stakeholder independence. These mechanisms allow labs to mobilize diverse resources, streamline collaboration processes, and create a shared yet flexible research agenda. Additionally, by fostering both cognitive and organizational proximity while preserving the independence of academic and industrial actors, joint U-I labs overcome typical challenges in UICs, such as cultural misalignment and goal divergence. This research contributes to UIC (Rybnicek and Königsgruber 2019) and the Open innovation in science (Beck et al. 2022) literature in three ways. First, it refines the understanding of managerial micro-foundations within joint U-I labs, offering insights into their unique capacity to sustain double objectives over time. Second, it highlights the importance of hybrid governance models in achieving longevity and mutual satisfaction for academic and industrial stakeholders. Finally, it expands the open innovation and science theory by presenting a framework for team-level management that balances proximity and independence at a team level. This framework transcends the use-inspired basic research model (Stokes 1997), situating U-I collaborations within the broader paradigm of Open Innovation in Science (OIS). Beck, Susanne, Carsten Bergenholtz, Marcel Bogers, Tiare-Maria Brasseur, Marie Louise Conradsen, Diletta Di Marco, Andreas P. Distel, et al. 2022. ‘The Open Innovation in Science Research Field: A Collaborative Conceptualisation Approach'. Industry and Innovation 29 (2): 136–85. https://doi.org/10.1080/13662716.2020.1792274. Meissner, Dirk, Yuan Zhou, Bruno Fischer, and Nicholas Vonortas. 2022. ‘A Multilayered Perspective on Entrepreneurial Universities: Looking into the Dynamics of Joint University-Industry Labs'. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 178 (May):121573. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2022.121573. Rybnicek, Robert, and Roland Königsgruber. 2019. ‘What Makes Industry–University Collaboration Succeed? A Systematic Review of the Literature'. Journal of Business Economics 89 (2): 221–50. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11573-018-0916-6. Stokes, Donald E. 1997. Pasteur's Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation. Brookings Institution Press.