14 :: Industry-Academia with Céline Abecassis-Moedas

This issue is a special collaboration with Jeppe Høier and his newsletter Corporate Venturing, where he shares the insights and learnings from 15 years working with CVCs.

🔎 The question: How can academia drive innovation for or with businesses?

🦸 The Expert: Céline Abecassis-Moedas

Céline is a first-class academic in strategy, sustainability, and innovation, with 20 years of experience working with corporations (consulting, teaching executive education, and sitting on boards). She holds a Ph.D. in Management from École Polytechnique in France and has lived and worked in several cities, including Paris, London, New York, Lisbon, and Brussels. She has been a visiting professor at MIT and ESCP Business School, as well as a consultant at AT Kearney. Currently, Céline is the Dean for Executive Education at Católica Lisbon School of Business and Economics, where she also teaches Design Thinking and Design Management and sits on the board of CUF, Vista Alegre, Laurel, and Lectra.

💡 The learnings:

Industry-Academia collaboration involves the sharing of knowledge, resources, and expertise between educational institutions and businesses or industries to foster innovation, research, and the development of practical applications.

According to Céline, to ensure successful collaboration models, there are a few differences and misalignments between both sides that must be accounted for and managed upfront when doing so:

• The pace: Researching and producing knowledge is a long-term, slow, and meticulous game that businesses’ fast-moving demands tend to be impatient about. However, that pace allows for innovations that are grounded in more sustainable practices and societal benefits.

• The KPIs: The end goal is similar but the drivers and incentives are not the same. Academia focuses on publishing papers and on the quality of their teaching, while the industry is dependent on commercial interests. Those can work hand in hand but must be acknowledged.

• The language: Few translators understand both worlds - their linguist, processes, working models - well enough to transform the inputs of one into useful outputs for the other. Identifying practical applications for academic insights is a challenge that only those translators can solve.

Those collaboration models can take many forms or shapes, though. Based on Céline’s experience, some of the mechanisms used to leverage academia to inform and develop innovation in the industry are:

• Applied research: when scientific investigation addresses a specific business need or problem. For example, Céline is currently working on a sustainability and fashion research project that is sponsored by Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos (retail sector).

• In-class real-world projects: when, as part of the coursework, students develop solutions to business challenges presented by an invited organization. For example, Céline partnered with Deloitte Portugal for multiple years to do that as part of a strategy consultancy course.

• Board seats for academics: when professors, researchers, or scientists are invited to share their expertise and academic perspectives with organizations’ executive leaders - typically as non-executive board members.

• Co-creation of executive education programs: when programs are designed in partnership between universities and other organizations to upskill talent in a necessary way for that industry.

• Startup instigation, incubation, and acceleration: when the education institution plays an active role in identifying, enabling, promoting, and connecting entrepreneurs to the industry. Glooma and Sensei are two examples of startups that have been somehow connected to the Center for Technological Innovation & Entrepreneurship (CTIE) from Católica Lisbon School of Business and Economics when Céline was leading it. Both are on to interesting go-to-market paths together with corporate partners from the university.

In conclusion, in the vast landscape of knowledge, academia and industry converge like two explorers on an intellectual expedition. Navigating the terrain of theory and practice, collaboration becomes a dynamic quest and a symbiotic journey that is the compass to a shared destination of societal advancement through innovation. And there are still a lot of unexplored territories.

See you next Tuesday! 👋

Ps. You got it right. Another new format. Hope you enjoyed reading the expert as much as I liked asking her the question and discussing the answer together with Jeppe. If you have someone in mind that I should interview as an expert or any question you’d like to have an expert answer, let me know in the form.