Academia-industry collaboration as an emerging model of design research: An examination of the Steelcase – Mayo Clinic case

Although the field of design research could potentially gain from collaboration between academia and industry this approach to research has not received much experimentation or scholarly attention. Design outcomes research, the primary objective of which is to examine the outcomes of designed artifacts when implemented, is one of many potential foci of design research that could benefit from such collaboration. However few models of successful collaboration exist and there is little knowledge about how such collaboration can work, what could go wrong and what safeguards might be implemented to increase the chances of success. This is a case study of a design outcomes research collaboration between an academic unit, the Mayo Clinic, and a corporation, Steelcase Inc. The study traces the evolution and describes important details of the collaboration process. keywords: academia-industry collaboration, design outcomes research