Cannot be Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

The hallmark of a knowledge economy is the strong industry-academia linkage that has shared vision for research, innovation and workforce development.

- S Vaidhyasubramaniam

The multiple options to initiate, strengthen and sustain industry-academia partnerships is one of the biggest challenges. Many higher education institutions (HEIS) are wanting to engage intensely with industry unaware of their limitations, while many industry players collaborate with only a few HEIS due to lack of proper match. This imbalance in this critical dimension of higher education needs a thorough analysis to understand ground realities, mitigate challenges and reinforce the partnership through multi-modal arrangements between industry and academia with government agencies being the progressive facilitator. The need to enrich knowledge-based capital, both for industry competitiveness and to address socio-economic challenges, benefits those universities and industries with genuine intent to forge partnership for a sustainable co-existence resulting in a win-win for both.