Do multi-sector ventures work?

Professor Michel Rod is pursuing answers to how academic-industry-government collaborations all around the world work effectively together.

As collaboration among academic, government and industry partners becomes an increasingly common method of tackling significant issues, Associate Professor of Marketing Michel Rod is concerned with the potential outcomes of some of these multi-sector ventures, which historically have a high fail rate.

After helping to establish a joint venture that ultimately did not succeed in London, England in the early 1990s, Rod pursued a doctoral degree at Birmingham Business School in the United Kingdom. His thesis work examined collaborative work amongst pharmaceutical firms, government and university partners in the health sector, and he maintains a passionate interest in what he calls the “triple helix” of academia-industry-government interaction.

“I am examining the enhancement of collaborative relationships within the triple helix,” Rod explains. “For example, given that successful serial entrepreneurs, who set up a number of different ventures, show effectual behaviour, is this also the case with triple helix ventures? Effectuating entrepreneurs fly by the seat of their pants and they make things happen. Does it have any relevance in this triple helix collaborative atmosphere?”

Whether it’s a joint venture focused on the health and social welfare of prisoners in the United Kingdom, or a Canadian industry-government-academic collaborative project that studies fetal alcohol syndrome, Rod is pursuing answers to how various multi-sector collaborations all over the world work effectively together.

“It’s significant,” notes Rod, “because we are seeing more and more of this type of collaborative approach, where they realize they cannot operate without partners from other sectors. Multiple sectors are coming together to create and the apply this new knowledge, so it is important to guide their structuring and management on an ongoing basis.”

Rod is particularly fascinated in what motivates the different sectors to connect and in the discourse associated with the collaboration. Partners often contribute widely different levels of representation – a senior government official or a vice-president of communication versus a regional sales manager from an industry firm, for instance. And Rod wants to know why.

His findings so far point to each sector bringing something legitimate to the table — a particular expertise, a certain mind-set and a different organizational culture.

“There’s advocacy. They speak on behalf of each other, and there is a need to have them all at the table,” he says.

Rod, who is originally from the Ottawa Valley, returned to Ottawa and to Carleton’s Sprott School of Business five years ago from New Zealand, where he had landed his first academic position as undergraduate program director and senior lecturer in the School of Marketing and International Business at Victoria University of Wellington in 2001.

While in New Zealand, he was selected by Korea University Business School’s inaugural visiting professor program. His background in life and medical sciences – he has a master’s in neuropharmacology — and in commerce has led to publication in peer-reviewed health and business journals, from Canadian Journal of Psychology and Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences to Industrial Marketing Management, Marketing Intelligence & Planning and Journal of Strategic Marketing.

Rod confesses to having a wide range of interests, including studying business-to-business inter-organizational relationships in Asia, the implications of burnout among front-line service workers, and the role of cultural intermediaries in the globalization of wine consumption. A paper he wrote in conjunction with Sprott colleague Prof. José Rojas-Méndez and a visiting graduate student about the attitude and behaviour of Canadian consumers toward organic wine will be published in the Journal of Food Products Marketing.

In a recent co-authored paper in Industrial Marketing Management, he explores how managers in different cultures – namely, China and India — face challenges of building relationships with service companies in New Zealand. Indian managers view “partnerships” as a means to creating a mutually valuable relationship, while in China, managers talk about “cooperation” to create cost-effective transactions, he writes.

What drives Rod predominantly is his curiosity in what motivates people to do what they do.

“What would motivate someone to commercialize a university-developed innovation, for example,” asks Rod. “I’m fascinated by a lot of different things and I’m motivated to pursue qualitative areas of research. I have a network of collaborators who stimulate me and I stimulate them.

“I want to understand the big picture,” notes Rod. “What motivates me to do what I do? What are the incentives and disincentives?”

In 2011, Rod received a Carleton University Research Achievement Award.

Michel Rod is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business.

Story by: Susan Hickman