Close to business sounds simple. It isn’t.
At AU Herning, Anders Frederiksen has spent 15 years exploring a question that has only become more relevant: How do you bring research and business close enough together for both sides to learn? As a researcher and, later, Head of the Department of Business Development and Technology at Aarhus BSS, he has found that it’s harder than it sounds. But he has also seen that there is a great deal to be gained when it works.
Around 15 years ago, Anders faced a choice. He had returned to Denmark after several years abroad. Should he continue his academic career at the university? Or should he move into industry?
As a researcher, he had always been interested in businesses and had worked with data from companies. So when he heard about the university environment in Herning and its close collaboration with the business community, he was intrigued.
“I had heard that the environment in Herning was closely connected to industry, and I thought, well, let’s give it a try,” he says.
That led to a position as a professor and, later, the role of Head of Department. But what drew him to Herning back then is still what motivates him today.
“What motivates me is creating value for the society we’re part of. It’s about engaging with businesses to understand the challenges they face and seeing how we as a university can contribute while also generating new knowledge.”
A problem isn’t a research question
Bringing research and business closer together sounds simple. Find a company. Find a researcher. Get them around the same table. In reality, it rarely works that way.
“Businesses don’t necessarily come with a research question. They come with a challenge they need to solve. A technology they want to develop further. Data they don’t know how to use. A process that could be improved. Or an idea that might be developed into a new business opportunity,” Anders explains.
Some of these problems can become research projects. Others are better suited to a student project. And some may not belong at a university at all.
“If a company has a problem and we can sit down together and say that in 200 hours, we’ll have the answer, I would call that consultancy,” he says.
For him, things only become really interesting when the answer doesn’t already exist. When a company’s challenge contains a question that can generate new knowledge.
Trust takes time
To identify that question, the researcher needs to get close to the business.
“I need the dialogue with the companies to qualify the research questions I ask. It’s important to me to work on issues that have a real impact on the society we’re part of.”
Anders has experienced this first-hand through his research into personnel economics. Access to company data has, among other things, made it possible to examine how incentives support employee performance, productivity and career development. But that kind of access doesn’t happen by itself.
“It takes time to get to know a company and understand its challenges. It requires trust if you’re going to be given access to knowledge and data. And both the researcher and the company have to accept that we don’t necessarily know in advance what will come out of the collaboration. That’s also what makes it difficult, interesting and research.”
When the researcher’s models met reality
Anders came to Herning as a researcher. Becoming head of his own department was not part of the plan. And for a professor researching people, incentives and organisations, taking on a leadership role proved something of a reality check.
“From day one, I realised that there were dimensions to my models that didn’t quite match the complexity of the real world,” he says with a laugh.
A strength that could be put to even greater use
Anders wants to draw even more on his many years of experience of getting close to businesses and understanding their situation. One example is Manufactory at AU Herning, a growth and technology centre where businesses and researchers work closely together on specific manufacturing challenges.
The challenges businesses face rarely fit neatly into a single academic discipline. And that’s why Anders sees great potential in connecting the department’s relationships with the business community with expertise from other disciplines at Aarhus BSS and across Aarhus University.
“We have developed processes and a structure for working with businesses. But there may well be challenges where we need colleagues who are more technical than we are, or who can bring different perspectives from other parts of the university,” he says.
Students need to get close, too
When Anders is asked to point to something he’s particularly proud of, he returns to the students. Every year, around 500 students from the department work with more than 250 companies as part of their education.
“It gives businesses new perspectives, while the students get to apply their academic skills to something that actually matters to a company. Sometimes it leads to an internship, a student job or a job afterwards. I’m proud that we have succeeded in creating that link between our study programmes and businesses.”
Still on a journey
Anders is now turning 50. And when he looks back on his years in Herning, it’s not titles or figures that he highlights.
“It has been incredibly rewarding to help build a department together with the people and students here, but just as much to be able to bring the department and Aarhus University into play in the society we’re part of. And I still feel that we’re on a journey of development that has only just begun.”