Engaging commercial organisations

By Alex Singleton, University of Liverpool

 

It is common for academic geographers to work with public sector organisations when promoting their outputs, however, the commercial sector offers many opportunities that can both illustrate the importance of your work and promote the relevance of the discipline of geography to a wider audience. However, the task of involving commercial entities in research projects or prompting them to utilise research findings presents significant challenges. Where this works best is when there is a mutual benefit that can be assured for both the commercial organisation and the academic. Without this, interest is often difficult to maintain, and engagements are likely to fail.

Here I provide some general guidance on working with commercial organisations with some tips about what helps these engagements be successful. Although presented generally, these learnings have been developed while running the Consumer Data Research Centre which is a national data infrastructure service funded by the ESRC that has worked with commercial and business partners for over a decade.

 

Selling motivations for engagement

Commercial organisations are typically motivated by different things to academics. Many decisions within business are focused on maximising profit by enhancing efficiency or reducing costs. Although academic motivation of research may be to contribute new theory or advance methodological approaches, within the commercial sector, potential end users will primarily be interested in how your work could be applied.

Do: Recognise that commercial motivations are different and promote your work in terms of what it can do for an organisation, particularly if this would help increase their efficiency or reduce costs.

Don’t: Make communications complicated through specialist language, or over emphasise the academic over potential applied contributions. The more difficult an output is to understand, use or access, the less likely that it will be applied.

 

Trust takes time

It is less likely that a commercial organisation will work with an academic in an operational context if there is no pre-established relationship. These can take time to build, and it is often more fruitful to build engagements from smaller activities that are less costly or risky than those that would be more involved and require higher degrees of buy in. Growing relationships through partnership working requires persistent and continued efforts. There are many ways in which you can work with a commercial organisation including: Masters dissertations, PhD projects, collaborative research projects and consultancy.

Do: Reach out to your partnership and innovation teams within your organisation as they may be able to assist you contacting organisations who have existing relationships with your university.

Don’t: Attempt to initiate an engagement with an organisation by asking for too much (finance, time etc.) or that has a lot of risk associated with it.

 

Aligning timescales

Timescales for seeing results are often much shorter in a commercial setting and longer-term engagements can often be a more challenging sell to an organisation. For example, an 18-month grant with potential future results/benefits at the end might be less attractive than a shorter-term project. It is important to remember that even when no finances are involved, there is a cost to a commercial organisation for engagement, as they spend time on these activities rather than doing something else.

Do: Have conversations with potential partners about what timescales work for them, and choose engagement opportunities that would be most effective within these contexts.

Don’t: Assume that an engagement without cost is “free” for the organisation.

 

Dynamic networks

Commercial organisations are not static, and relative to academia, there tends to be a greater mobility of workers within and between them. Keeping track of these movements can be useful to develop new opportunities with additional organisations or in new areas, and acutely as people are promoted into more senior roles. Setting up your own networks around areas of interest and engagement can be very useful, and a great way of initiating new contacts – this has become much easier to do remotely through technologies such as Zoom and Teams.

Do: Keep track of where people are moving to through platforms such as LinkedIn, and make note of the destinations of students that you have supervised – they will be useful future contacts.

Don’t: Engage networks unstrategically, especially those online. Ensure that communications are tailored, relevant and useful to the intended audience.

 

How to cite

Singleton, A. (2023) Engaging commercial organisations. Communicating research beyond the academy. Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Guide. Available at: https://doi.org/10.55203/QOPH9263