The Foundation granted Handelshögskolan a large research program called How Engineering Sciences Can Impact Industry in a Global World: A Longitudinal Study of Chalmers’ Interactions with Companies.
This is part of the 'Samhällets långsiktiga kunskapsförsörjning', which is a common initaitive from RJ, Forte, VR and Formas.
This project will critically analyze how engineering sciences can impact Swedish industry, to facilitate entrepreneurship and innovation in a globalized world. Chalmers is taken as an extreme case, within Sweden, as a university which is both an international scientific leader and company partner. Our research questions address how and why university-industry collaboration in networks affect the development of new scientific and industrial knowledge, in relation both to scientific excellence and industrial competitiveness. Our research strategy is to focus on a detailed, longitudinal study of networks developing between firm partners and Chalmers University of Technology, from 2000 to 2015. The study provides an overview of companies interaction with Chalmers, using extensive databases as well as case studies. It focuses on three industrial sectors, namely nanotechnology for high tech, control engineering (signals and systems) medium tech and sports for low tech. Cross-industry studies will be conducted of Chalmers stimulation of innovation and entrepreneurship. Theory predicts firms would act differently in collaboration with universities, due to the differing capabilities. Quantitative comparisons of all researchers in Sweden within the corresponding fields/disciplines will constitute a control. This provides opportunities for reflections upon how universities and firms together determine the future of the Swedish knowledge economy.
Professor Maureen McKelvey is principle investigator, and researchers involved also include Olof Zaring, Daniel Ljungberg and Evangelos Bourelos.
See more about the Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship.