This document proposes a new method for developing true partnerships between universities and businesses. It describes a program run by students at the Lohja Business Lab where they are responsible for contacting local companies, promoting collaboration opportunities, and documenting the partnerships in a customer relationship management database. This systematic approach to managing partnerships provides benefits like improved experiential learning for students, deeper long-term relationships with companies, and accumulated knowledge that can be used to inform future projects.

1. A new method for developing true
partnership in universities
Teemu Ylikoski
Mika J. Kortelainen
Presented at the Learning by Developing Conference, May 2012.
Updated Nov-2012
11/24/2012
24.11.2012

2. University – business partnerships?
Experiential learning, LbD
Funding
Joint learning
Increasing importance
Systematicity
Strategic goal <-> haphazard approach?
A university’s business partnerships do not appear as a
genuinely common resource
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3. Forms of cooperation
•Campus visibility •Teaching cooperation
•Corporate presentations •Learning assignments
•CV clinics •Business projects
•Sponsored classrooms •Theses
•Cases
•Practical training
Employer Student
reputation contacts and
and sharing
recruitment knowledge
Know-how
Innovations
development
and
and
innovative
competitive
practices
advantage
•Knowledge sharing and •Research cooperation
networking •Small and large research
•Consulting experts projects
•Seminars •Innovation support
•Targeted training services
•Promoting
•Information services
entrepreneurship
Based on Aalto University School of Economics and PriceWaterHouseCoopers, 2009
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4. How are partnerships managed?
1. Relationship management is a strategic concern. It is related
to long-term competitive advantage, and is a top management
issue.
2. The ultimate purpose of relationship management is to
increase value for the organisation, and its stakeholders.
3. The process of relationship management is about identifying
key “customers” (such as partners), and developing the
relationships with them.
4. Systematic building of relationships results in various
benefits, such as profitability, retention, and customer
(partner) satisfaction.
5. All of this depends on documenting and sharing knowledge
about the key “customers”.
(Adapted from Payne & Frow 2005)
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5. Problems…
A university is not a business:
• autonomy of organisational units and individuals
• internal competition
• government-funding and non-profit operation
Who OWNS the partner?
• individual, research unit, faculty?
• more rarely are they common to the entire
school.
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6. Case Lohja
• Lohja Yrityslabra “Business Lab” has started
managing a partnership program for local businesses
• The Business Lab is a blended learning environment
that coordinates learning projects for the students
• …and knowledge-producing commissions for local
clients
• Represents expansive learning: tasks are complex,
with no set correct outcome, and there are several
participants making the learning collective
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7. Skills
Participating students learn skills:
• project management and
• customer relationship management
while coordinating the projects. At the same time,
students learn to expand their knowledge in
theoretical issues, such as marketing, strategy or e-
commerce, when they collect data and write
reports for the commissioning companies.
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8. A partnership program
As partner organisations are vital for this type of operation,
the Lab has initiated a partnership program to manage local
partners itself. Much like a “real world” customer
relationship program, the Business Lab hosts a database of
potential and current partner organisations. These
partnerships can be used as the learning context for any
relevant course in the entire Lohja unit.
Since the partnerships are systematically nurtured, over time
cooperation will become more strategic. For example, future
development projects with the aforementioned company
might focus on its e-commerce strategy – something that
would not be possible without a successful history of working
together.
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9. Students run the program
business students are responsible for:
1. Contacting the “customers”, i.e. local companies and
organisations who are potential partners for the Lab,
2. “Selling the service”, i.e. introducing the partners to the
idea of continuous cooperation with the Lab,
3. And following up on the “customers”, i.e. keeping in
touch to make sure mutual needs are covered.
4. Also, as in a “real” CRM, the students document
everything in the database. Hence, when one student
graduates and a new one enters the Lab, the partner
history stays available. As a consequence, knowledge
accumulates, is shared and future projects can build on
previous ones.
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10. Benefits
• improved learning for the students: first hand
experience in customer relationship management
• deeper partnerships, as relationships evolve over
time
• The partnership program does not assume or
require individual educators to relinquish their
“private” partners. Rather, it offers an
alternative route for cooperation, parallel to the
more conventional method of maintaining
partnerships.
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11. Full results of the case are
available:
Teemu Ylikoski, Mika J. Kortelainen, (2012) "A new
approach for managing university-workplace
partnerships", Industrial and Commercial Training,
Vol. 44 Iss: 6, pp.349 - 356
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