Vision Statement:

The Open Partnership: Women in Academe, Industry & Government

An Overview

At the initiation of its provost, Dr. Priscilla P. Nelson, the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) has launched an effort to facilitate the cross-sector exchange of information in order to increase collaboration among women in academia, industry and government. This effort builds upon the strategic concept of open innovation.

Open innovation is the practice of being willing to embrace new ideas that come from outside, as well as from inside a given organization, as long as those ideas help to accomplish organizational goals. This practice is not new; however, in recent years, it has become increasingly important as organizations try to maintain their edge in technological creativity and innovation within a competitive global marketplace.

Phase 1: NJIT began the first step in the Open Partnership process--the identification of strategic direction--in May of 2006 at an event that brought together women research faculty, executives from business and industry, and representatives from NJ state government. The participants identified three emerging themes around which cross-sector collaboration might be especially fruitful:

1. Cross Sector People Exchange
2. Cross Sector Research Collaboration
3. Cross Sector Interactive Resource Database

(See Appendix A below for specific examples of possible collaborative activities.)

Phase 2: On April 27, 2007, NJIT will host a second Open Partnership planning event designed to create a roadmap of the steps needed to begin win-win cross-sector collaboration.  The participants--faculty researchers, highly placed industry executives, and key representatives from state government--will work together to identify the specific collaborative activities that are likely to provide the greatest immediate organizational benefit across sectors.

Phase 3: Agenda: The April 27 event (7:30 am to 2 pm) will begin with a keynote address by Angie McGuire that will provide an overview and describe a dozen or more possible partnership options. A panel of representatives from each sector will respond to the keynote, posing challenges. Then participants will work in facilitated groups to analyze the options and reduce the list of options to the six most promising possibilities. NJIT will unveil Syncus^TM, a new Wiki-like networking tool developed especially for the Open Partnership, and will use its electronic voting capability to establish a consensus among the participant groups. During a working lunch, the groups will continue to analyze the reduced list of options, focusing on identifying the crucial challenges that would have to be overcome in order to make each collaborative activity successful. The event will conclude with another round of voting, followed by a closing keynote speech that will summarize the threads emerging from the day’s discussions and identify a specific sequence of next steps.

Appendix A

The Open Partnership:  Women in Academe, Industry & Government

Examples of Possible Collaboration Activities
(Developed during the 2006 Partnership Planning Process)

A. Cross Sector People Exchange

1. Executive Corp: Senior level women who are no longer employed full-time in the workforce provide expertise to individuals and emerging businesses. (E.g. assistance with strategic planning, fundraising, leading seminars, research consultation, business consultation).

2. Internships: Provide opportunities for women undergraduate and graduate students and faculty to work in industry or government on a specified project for a period of time.

3. Professors of Practice: Universities such as NJIT provide women executives with an opportunity to share their expertise with a new generation in the classroom, functioning as special lecturers or research professors in an on-loan partnership with industry.

4. Staff-on-Loan: Provides women industry staff and managers an opportunity to share their expertise with academia on a specified project for a period of time.

5. Job Shadowing: Provide opportunities for cross-sector job shadowing on a short-term basis to increase mutual understanding of how each sector operates and to facilitate mentoring, etc.

6. Speakers’ Bureau: Provide a searchable database of potential speakers and their areas of expertise from industry, government, and academia. (See section C below.)

7. Research Consultant Bureau: Identify researchers in all sectors who could serve as consultants on various topics. (This could be managed through the Cross Sector Interactive Resource Database. See Section C below.)

B. Cross Sector Research Collaboration

1. Cross-sector Knowledge Transfer: Co-host cross-sector conferences and symposia on various topics of mutual interest.

2. Cross Sector Grant Initiatives: Facilitate collaborative grant initiatives (e.g. SBIR, STTR, R&D topics of interest)

3. Cross Sector Business Development Workshops: Host workshops to facilitate technology transfer, business commercialization, patent submissions, intellectual property, and effective grant writing, building on existing cross-sector initiatives by the NJIT Office of Research and Development.

4. Technology Showcases: Host showcases for researchers from all sectors to facilitate collaboration among people within disciplines and across disciplines, to provide visibility, and to increase opportunities for further research and investment.

5. Research Consultant Bureau: Provide a searchable database of university researchers and their areas of expertise that are available to serve as consultants to industry and government on specific projects. (This initiative builds on the NJIT Office of Research and Development’s current Business Acceleration Grant from the NJ Commission on Science and Technology.)

6. “Ask an Expert” Bureau: Provide a searchable database of professionals from each sector along with who are willing to provide expert advice on specific problems within their area of expertise. .

C. Cross Sector Interactive Resource Database

1. Calendar of Professional Events: Provide a dynamic, user- driven database of professional development seminars, symposia, lectures, conferences, workshops across all sectors---in order to allow individuals outside of the host organization to participate in event, to allow host organizations to publicize events easily to the entire cross-sector community. Goal: to encourage cross-sector networking, knowledge transfer, innovation, diversity of perspective etc.

2. Board Nominations: Provide leaders in government, industry, and academia with an accessible database of vetted individuals who can be nominated or appointed to board positions. Provide individuals interested in serving on specific types of boards with information about appointment opportunities.

3. Award Nominations: Provide leaders in government, industry, and academia with an accessible database of accomplished individuals and who can be nominated for national, regional, and local awards—thus increasing the diversity of the candidate pool. Provide individuals with information about awards for which they might wish to apply.

4. Work-Life Balance: Provide a user-driven database of practical resources, research, and organizational best practices that can assist professionals in better balancing the demands of work and family life—demands that adversely affect women to a greater extent than men.

The Open Partnership
email: Open.Partnership@njit.edu
phone: 973.642.4671
www.njit.edu/academics/provost/openpartnership