Higher Education Institutions and Alliances adopt Agora to facilitate their institutional transformation and boost R&I, but the platform’s full power could be unfolded by including external stakeholders. Increasing the diversity of Agora communities and providing more members to offer and consume services.
Opening services and Alliance communities to external stakeholders is not just a means in itself, but yields the potential to offer tangible advantages for HEIs and industry alike. At the same time, it is evident that it also poses challenges that need to be taken into account. With this in mind, we will explore the benefits and potential challenges for Alliances opening their Agora to industry stakeholders.
Benefits of opening Agora platforms for industrial access
For Alliances or HEIs using Agora, there are several reasons to open the platform to industry stakeholders. First, making Agora and its services as open as possible to companies and business professionals is in the spirit of Open Science in several ways. Making HEI resources (e.g. research infrastructures) accessible to outside stakeholders promotes the efficient use and reuse of resources, making use of available capacities and saving money. Additionally, opening participation opportunities to companies can increase transparency and visibility for both structures, facilitating collaborations and building trust.
Second, providing companies access to Agora platforms can support HEIs and Alliances regarding their Goal Attainment and Strategic Alignment. For example, open and accessible Agoras can facilitate achieving goals in R&I and sustainable development, such as the objectives enshrined in the ERA Policy Agenda or the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. A number of HEI Alliances are dedicated to community-building, boosting academia–industry relations or technology transfer. An Agora platform open to external stakeholders can enhance these efforts, fostering greater collaboration and joint initiatives.
Third, this closely relates to strengthening Stakeholder Engagement and Strategic Partnerships with companies, both on the institutional and individual level. Stakeholder engagement is built through well-designed and successful collaboration. Granting access to Agora integrates companies into collaborative R&I communities, simplifying collaboration for short-term endeavours, which in turn inspire long-term partnerships. These instances allow for a better understanding of each stakeholder’s needs and contributions, and build strong communication channels. Researchers and HEI faculty staff can also directly benefit from these strong ties with companies through career events, internships, networking or other opportunities.
Fourth, there are financial and material benefits for HEIs to be gained by inviting businesses to use Agora. As companies are profit-driven entities and aim to use the platform to this end, it may be pertinent for Alliances to introduce paid-membership models for commercial users, adding to the sustainability and longevity of the platform.
Finally, opening the Agora platform to industry potentially benefits not only companies but the overall ecosystem of HEIs and even society as a whole by improving access to talent, knowledge and infrastructures. More and more HEIs embrace the so-called third mission, as it contributes to a thriving ecosystem for R&I while adding to their economic and social activities. HEIs can use the Agora platform to foster collaboration with companies and other stakeholders, boost the careers of their own staff and researchers and open new avenues for technology and knowledge transfer, which offers promising opportunities for joint R&I activities and business at the same time.
Challenges and prerequisites for opening Agora platforms for industrial access
Although there are, as previously shown, several advantages for HEI Alliances to open Agora platforms to industry and business stakeholders, it is also important to anticipate and consider potential challenges and risks associated with this step.
First, and although Open Science principles provide strong reasons for making the platform and its services accessible to outside stakeholders, these principles also recognise that there are limits to openness. Common limitations to opening research outputs include ethical, legal, economic or social barriers, which can come with different kinds of reasons for restricted access. Furthermore, it is important to acknowledge the need for HEIs to maintain strategic autonomy, for example, when it comes to deciding which research outputs to valorise and which to open publicly. Although Open Science strives towards making research outputs as accessible as possible, not every kind of output can be entirely open or accessed free of charge.
Second, it is important to note that giving companies direct access to researchers can interfere with internal HEI processes, as many universities have dedicated offices or departments for industry relations, for example in the form of Technology Transfer Offices (TTO). A lack of involvement of these departments may therefore lead to inefficient workflows, go against established protocols or pose challenges for researchers who lack the necessary skills for engaging with companies. Therefore, the Agora platform should not be seen as a substitute for TTOs but instead collaborate with them to expand their potential customer base and form communities of practice.
Third, one needs to consider legal aspects and potential regulatory constraints. When giving companies access to alliance Agoras and their offerings, HEIs still need to be able to safeguard their Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and sensitive information. In the same vein, researchers and HEI staff need to consider the use of appropriate licences when sharing resources on the platform to enable proper acknowledgment of ownership if necessary. Defining precise terms of use and access for aspects such as Intellectual Property (IP), data use and access, pricing models is therefore very important. What’s more, many HEIs are public institutions, and their infrastructures and projects may be recipients of public funding as well, which can mean that funding requirements exclude the possibility of commercial use. Paid services may therefore introduce additional management responsibilities and obligations.
Finally, there are strategic and political challenges to consider. Agora platforms are communities built for HEI Alliances and their stakeholders, but the process of opening their services usually requires joint strategies and consensus to some extent, which ideally manifest in comprehensible policies, commercialisation strategies, guidelines or the definition of governance mechanisms. It is also important to empathise with all participating stakeholders to understand their needs, mitigate against conflicts and clarify expectations. Besides institutional processes, this may also require some kind of cultural change, for example if researchers are not used to collaborating with outside stakeholders or vice versa.
Evaluating benefits and risks of opening Agora to industry
Although these reflexions about opening Agora platforms to external stakeholders, particularly businesses, are not necessarily comprehensive, they highlight at least two key findings. On the one hand, it becomes evident that there are several good reasons to grant industry professionals access to the platform to use Agora to its fullest intent and extent. On the other hand, it also shows that this can be a complex and demanding process with multiple aspects to consider.
In conclusion, it is important to consider the scope of aUPaEU: while the project does offer tailored and tested platforms for HEI Alliances, it is important to bear in mind that both HEIs and Alliances have a legitimate interest in preserving their strategic autonomy. When using Agora to form communities for R&I, HEIs need to remain in control over their own resources (e.g. data and infrastructures), services and strategic alignments. Therefore, the decision to open their Agora platforms to external stakeholders, particularly companies, can ultimately only reside with the governance of HEIs and alliance partnerships. By presenting potential benefits and challenges, we hope to inform any decision process in this area.