Conventional wisdom assumes that companies invest in academic partnerships to produce short-term, commercially useful outcomes, and that academics cannot “do” business, making it difficult to align research agendas with industrial needs. Benjamin Cabanes and Quentin Plantec find that both those ideas are outdated and that industry is willing to initiate and fund basic research, even when immediate applications are unclear.
Cabanes, B. & Plantec, Q. (2026). Why companies use academic partnerships to invest in basic research. LSE Business Review.
