Benefits management in university-industry collaboration programs

Current knowledge of benefits management is mostly limited to single organisations. This paper investigates benefits management applicable to large university-industry collaboration programs – a particular form of inter-organisational relationship. It presents a holistic, structured and customisable framework for how benefits can be managed, using the structured analysis and design technique. The research has been informed and validated in a major case study. The case study involved a R&D collaboration between a university and a large industry in Portugal over a six-year period with a total investment of more than 70 million Euros. The paper discusses the challenges of implementing benefits management among two organisations who have distinct and sometimes competing long-term benefits. This empirical research corroborates current theoretical approaches to benefits management and presents a number of new insights on how challenges may be effectively managed from a technical and social perspective, for example, the ownership of benefits realisation should change overtime, from Program Mangers to Line Managers of each organisation partner. Finally, the proposed BM.UIC framework can be used as starting point for development of a systematic benefit management process in any major project and program.