Abstract:

Modern universities are innovation hubs integrated with diverse communities, including research centers, technology companies, venture capital businesses and technology brokers.

To achieve competitiveness, it is not enough for educational organizations to focus only on internal resources. Cooperative relationships with strategic partners enables the universities to achieve synergy, which allows them to solve problems that cover the entire life cycle of a high-tech product.

To solve this complex task, the university must be part of numerous specialized consortia and tactical alliances. However, the structure of these alliances and the distribution of roles and resources is often situational or historically determined. In order to build long-term cooperation between universities and partners in order to achieve the strategic objectives of the university, a science-based approach is needed that ensures transparency of the partner selection procedures and congruence of the alliance members.

In this paper, we propose a comprehensive approach to the selection of partners for the creation of consortia. This approach reflects the geographical and industry parameters of the markets on which the partnership is projected, the diversity of the partnership's activities. The presented methodology involves determination of strategic significance of projects, identification of the necessary and available assets, and process of partners scoring. The proposed conceptual model of the innovation-focused partnership involves the typification of the assets of the partnership participants, as well as the control of the full life cycle of the partnership, including the identification of triggers for exiting the partnership.

The described methodological approach was tested as part of the formation of the Moscow Scientific and Educational Consortium, which covered 7 universities with more than 80,000 students.

The results of the work are of interest to strategists of universities, industrial enterprises, scientific organizations and innovative companies.

Keywords:

Innovative development of universities, strategic industries, cooperation with education institutions, industry 4.0, long-term planning, strategic interaction.