NEW STUDY | Conflict when researchers and entrepreneurs work together

Researchers who want to bring their inventions to market usually enlist the help of experienced entrepreneurs. But when academics and entrepreneurs work together, conflict often arises. New research explains why and offers tips for smooth collaboration.

Society wants more inventions created in universities to reach the market. But it is sometimes difficult for researchers to work on commercialization themselves. But bringing entrepreneurs into a research team is not easy either. In a new study on multidisciplinary teams, researchers have studied conflicts in teams where academics work with entrepreneurs to commercialize inventions. To understand the conflicts that can arise, they followed one food tech company for several years and complemented it with data from 10 German teams.

– Scientists are trained to believe that there is an ultimate way to do something and they try to find it. But that logic can clash with commercial logic, where doing something is more important than getting it just right,” explains Ziad El-Awad, Sten K Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship, Lund University.

Dangerous to invite contractors too early

Entrepreneurship is about daring to try something new with prototypes, and then maybe going back and doing it again. Mistakes are a natural part of commercialization. This approach differs from the academic one, which is based on perfection. When the two logics meet in a start-up, conflicts can easily arise and collaboration suffers. El-Awad says there can be a danger in inviting entrepreneurs too early in a project.

– Although researchers often want to bring entrepreneurs into the team at an early stage and let them take charge of the commercialization, there may be a point in also involving researchers in the commercial processes. Taking full responsibility forces researchers to develop their own understanding of the logic and role of the entrepreneur in the team.

Entrepreneurs leave

Anna Brattström, Sten K Johnson Center for Entreprenuership, also involved in the study on multidisciplinary teams, says that the conflicts take a lot of energy from the team members. Often it is the entrepreneurs who leave the teams as a result.

– Conflicts can drag on for years without making any progress. When this happens, there is an increased risk that one party will eventually tire and leave the team. By then, the differences within the team have become a weakness instead of a strength. But if you find a way to build mutual understanding, there is a lot to gain,” explains Anna Brattström.

The importance of understanding and respect

For researchers and entrepreneurs to collaborate successfully, they need to have a mutual understanding of each other’s worldviews. They need to understand that there are two different logics that need to work together. But it’s not something that takes care of itself, it’s something you need to work on.

– Incubators and other actors working with multidisciplinary teams need to spend a lot of time explaining the commercial logic to researchers before throwing an entrepreneur into the team. Similarly, entrepreneurs who have worked with researchers need to understand how the scientific ideals work and why they are important,” says El-Awad.

Contact
ziad.el-awad@fek.lu.se
anna.brattstrom@fek.lu.se

More about the study
The study was conducted by Ziad El-Awad and Anna Brattström at the Sten K Johnson Center of Entrepreneurship, Lund University, and Nicola Breugst at the Technical University of Munich. The article is entitled Bridging cognitive scripts in multidisciplinary academic spinoff teams: A process perspective on how academics learn to work with non-academic managers and is published in the scientific journal Research Policy, Volume 51, Issue 10, December 2022.