Role Played by Intermediary Institutions in Academy-industry Technology Alliances: the Case of Agoria, the Belgian Technology Industry Federation
Abstract: Due to the increasing complexity and pace of technological development, and the higher uncertainty and costs imposed by R&D projects, organizations have strong motives to collaborate through various modes of strategic alliances. When technology alliances simultaneously involve academy and industry organizations, the collaboration can be significantly complicated by the specific rules prevailing either in the academic environment or in the industrial environment. Academy-industry collaboration difficulties may arise for reasons of divergences in terms of motives, incentives, constraints, and organizational culture. Hence they need to be managed with specific organizational schemes. In the present paper, we propose to shed light on the role that intermediary institutions may play in academy-industry technology alliances. Indeed, when allying, academy and industry organizations can have recourse to intermediary institutions, which may help them deal with their stringent and specific collaboration difficulties. We propose in this paper to focus on a specific type of intermediary institution; namely the industry federation. On the basis of an exploratory case study on the Belgian Technology Industry Federation, AGORIA, we expose the regulatory mechanisms implemented by this intermediary institution. This paper shows how intermediary institutions such as AGORIA may mitigate the collaboration difficulties and, therefore, ease the management of academy-industry technology alliances.
