Abstract:

This paper aims to identify and analyze all possible outcomes of joint-research activities involving university-industry cooperation in the Italian automotive industry. In detail, this paper is focused on capturing the interaction patterns between Creativity- vs Knowledge-based resources and their influence over the outcomes of university-industry research projects. This study analyzes such interactions and the corresponding effects throughout the design and implementation process of an Enterprise 2.0-based platform in the production lines of an Italian multinational company, which operates in the automotive industry. The resulting system is composed of different modules – i. e. Social Rating, Reputation Management, Rewarding and Recommendation –, which foster collaboration between workers in the production line and encourage knowledge sharing and new skills acquisition. The joint-research project is realized by the University of Calabria and FIAT-Chrysler Automobiles in collaboration with some Italian Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). It is funded by the European Commission and the Italian Minister of Education, University and Research. It aims to perform valuable research activities and to transfer them to the industry at hand, thus providing a stimulus for knowledge sharing, and supporting the creation of innovative recognition and reward systems in business contexts. Moreover, such an institutional policy supporting university-industry research projects is geared to strengthen the collaboration between academic and business organization, and aims to enhance industrial development in low-income regions by means of employing young and highly-skilled researchers. By a methodological point of view, this work identifies all possible outcomes by means of adopting a broader perspective than the existing on in literature. In detail, macroeconomic, socio-cultural, institutional and corporate slants are considered. The analysis takes into account all potential stakeholders and identifies the corresponding outcomes according to the Creativity-Knowledge-Innovation (CKI) model (Palmieri and Giglio, 2014). The assessment of project’s results is performed by listing and clustering its outcomes by perspective. Afterwards, a panel of experts has been involved in the evaluation process in order to analyze their impacts on the community of stakeholders. This work is an academic research paper adopting a case study approach. The research structure integrates the field literature review and a novel framework built on the CKI model. Originality of the methodology is assured by combining the qualitative case study approach with the very recent CKI model. Moreover, the perspective of analysis adopted is also original, since it is broader than the one currently adopted in literature. Originality is assured also by the application scenario. In fact, this work represents one of the few applications of such a novel methodology to a specific case study, thus representing a guidance for future research efforts in this field. This study may help field researchers to deepen the impacts of Creativity vs Knowledge dynamics on university-industry cooperation, since this work can be easily replayed by analyzing other joint-research projects involving different academic and business areas. Finally, it is also a tool for managers and governments in order to design better policies aimed at strengthening university-industry research.

Keywords:

UUniversity-Industry Cooperation, Joint-Research Programmes, Innovation in the Automotive Industry, Creativity, Knowledge.