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The Nuances of Knowledge
Stories About Collaboration

The Knowledge Foundation's 30th anniversary book is based on inspiring interviews with nine remarkable people who all share their insights on how collaboration can break down barriers between research and practice. The book demonstrates how collaboration leads to new innovations and improvements, as well as the importance of allowing the necessary time and effort to achieve long-term results. We hope these inspiring stories will encourage more people to engage in collaboration to meet the challenges of tomorrow.
Download the full book (in Swedish)

Academia

For academia, collaboration is a tool to understand and learn about the reality they study, to identify problems, and to develop new research ideas. Through dialogue with practitioners, researchers increase the odds that scientifically developed knowledge becomes relevant and can be applied beyond academia

" I can theorise about something that I find a bit exciting, but for it to really matter to anyone, it needs to be done in collaboration with companies.
Kristina Säfsten
Professor of Production Systems at Jönköping University

Business

For the business sector, collaboration may promote new thinking and innovation. Collaboration simply makes it possible to shorten the distance from research to its application, by translating and transforming it into practical contexts by, for example, consultants, entrepreneurs, industrial workers, or politicians. Collaboration further provides opportunities to attract and recruit skilled employees, and to build research and development expertise

" We have super-competent staff at Ericsson, so if we know what to do and how to do it, we can do it ourselves. The point of academia is that it takes care of what is unexpected and perhaps slightly mad.
Johan Eker
Principal Researcher at Ericsson Research and Professor at Lund University

Society

For society at large, the value of collaboration can be described as creating a foundation for trust and mutual understanding. Collaboration contributes not only to skills supply and lifelong learning, but also to a sense of belonging. By developing knowledge together and learning from each other, a different kind of value is created which goes beyond the direct benefits – the value of us all, in different ways, contributing to a wiser and more competitive society.

" If companies don’t perceive what we do as relevant, we can wave our business goodbye. There’s something in this buzz phrase – that it is part of our DNA – because it really is.
Lars Strannegård
President of the Stockholm School of Economics