Innovation Alchemy: Industry and Academia with Lori Glover

What this episode is about

Lori Glover discusses the intersection of academia and industry, highlighting how collaborative innovation can lead to successful products like Gatorade, which originated from a need identified by the University of Florida's football coach and was developed in partnership with the university's chemistry department. She emphasizes the mutual benefits of such partnerships, illustrating how academic research can create impactful solutions for real-world challenges.

Key takeaways

• Gatorade's genesis shows necessity breeds innovation; academia fuels industry evolution in unexpected ways.
• Partnerships amplify potential: startups need industry’s resources and insights for real-world impact beyond dorm-room ideas.
• In the shadows of Zuckerberg and Gates, collaborative research birthed products that transformed entire industries.
• The Bayh-Dole Act turned universities into innovation powerhouses, enabling patent ownership that reshaped commercial partnerships.
• Two-thirds of companies tap university research for innovation—proof that brains and businesses belong in class together.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Kara (Host) · 10 min speaking
• Lori Glover (Guest) · 16 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Lori Glover, Innovation Alchemy, Bayh-Dole Act
2. 5:00 – 10:00: MIT, Takeda
3. 10:00 – 15:00: MIT, AI in Business Strategy
4. 15:00 – 20:00: Steve Whitaker
5. 25:00 – 25:54: Lori Glover, Innovation Alchemy

Notable quotes from "Innovation Alchemy: Industry and Academia with Lori Glover"

• [KARA] Lori Glover is the managing director of Global Strategic Alliances at CSAIL.

  about MIT · at 0:00

• And then right after that in the '70s, then Bayh-Dole act, which is the Amendment to the Patent and Trademark Act, and that allowed universities to be able to own the patents…

  about Bayh-Dole Act · at 2:53

• Fred Smith, who passed away recently, came up basically when he was an undergraduate at Yale, I think, with the idea of FedEx, which he then spent the rest of his life building out and certainly worked at, so not that doesn't happen.

  about FedEx · at 4:04

• So the book goes over so many different styles and formats for what these can look like.

  about Lori Glover · at 9:18

• [LORI] Wholeheartedly, and I will say, our very most successful executive education course is one that we work in partnership with the Sloan School of Management on, we created AI in business strategy.

  about AI in Business Strategy · at 10:20

• He is like-- in all my years of doing this, he was truly the best, we say, POC, point of contact, for a company because he was present on campus.

  about Steve Whitaker · at 18:58

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Lori Glover — Person · Main guest · 2 mentions · first at 0:02
  Interview subject explaining how industry–university alliances work, drawing on her MIT CSAIL role and her book 'Innovation Alchemy' to discuss structures, incentives, and best practices for collaboration.
• Steve Whitaker — Person · Referenced practitioner / exemplar · 2 mentions · first at 18:55
  Cited as an example of an effective corporate point-of-contact who operationalized a university alliance by being present on campus, connecting internal business units, and sharing learnings across BT to generate ROI.

Books & papers

• Innovation Alchemy — Book · Primary recommendation · 2 mentions · first at 0:07
  The book authored by Lori Glover, discussing the synergy between academia and business in innovation.
  So the book goes over so many different styles and formats for what these can look like.

Companies & orgs

• MIT — Company · Business focus · 2 mentions · first at 5:38
  MIT is a key institution in the discussion of university-industry collaborations.
• NSF — Company · Referenced expert · 4 mentions
  National Science Foundation's role in catalyzing industry-university collaborations.
  But I really think what catalyzed the idea of universities and industry working together was in the 1970s, I believe, NSF, and they started the industry university…
• Takeda — Company · Case study · 1 mention · first at 9:42
  Example of a large-scale industry-university alliance with MIT.
  But then there's much more involved programs like the Takeda alliance we have here at MIT, where there's multiple patents that have come out of it.
• FedEx — Company · Referenced expert · 2 mentions
  Mentioned as an example of a company originating from a university idea.

Products & tech

• AI in Business Strategy — Product · Secondary recommendation · 1 mention · first at 10:29
  An executive education course mentioned as a successful example of university-industry collaboration.

Concepts & topics

• Bayh-Dole Act — Concept · Key argument · 1 mention · first at 2:53
  Legislation that changed how universities handle patents from federally funded research.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:02 [KARA] Lori Glover is the managing director of Global Strategic Alliances at CSAIL. She's the author of the new book Innovation Alchemy. Thanks for being here. [LORI] Thank you, Kara. Glad to be here. [KARA] So we're going to talk about what business plus academia can equal and how, in some ways, they can amplify, it can amplify both pieces of the equation. To that point, you tell this story in your book. Talk about the story of Gatorade. It's like a product people know but-- [LORI] Absolutely, absolutely, Gatorade, which is a wildly popular sports drink, probably arguably started the whole trend of sports drinks actually came out of a need that the University of Florida football team had, and we say necessity is the mother of invention.

0:48 Well, at that point, Dewayne Douglas was the coach of University of Florida Gators. That's the team name, and it was 1965, and he realized that his players were really struggling in the Florida heat, and he wanted something that could help them replenish some of the fluids and things that they lost through sweating in the heat. So he went to the university's chemistry department, and there was a faculty member there, I believe, Robert Cade, who worked with the coach Douglas, on creating this replenishment solution, which became Gatorade.

1:26 And I think it was 1967 when the Florida Gators won their very first Orange Bowl over Georgia Tech. And what probably kind of made Gatorade become so famous is, the Georgia Tech coach said, oh, yeah, the reason we lost, well, we didn't have Gatorade. So from that loan, everyone started like, what's Gatorade? And you've got now this great product. [KARA] It's funny because Gatorade has always been a product I've known about, and I am ashamed to say, I never connected it with the Gators, the University of Florida, and I love that piece of it.

2:11 You point out, which is really it was other teams being like, what are these folks drinking? Like, I want that thing. [LORI] I want that because that's going to make me win. Yeah. I think there are points in history where universities and industry have worked together on unique pieces. But I really think what catalyzed the idea of universities and industry working together was in the 1970s, I believe, NSF, and they started the industry university collaborative research or cooperative research consortium kind of thing, and it was an NSF program that was to catalyze industry and universities working together.

2:53 And then right after that in the '70s, then Bayh-Dole act, which is the Amendment to the Patent and Trademark Act, and that allowed universities to be able to own the patents of federally funded research, which really changed the game in so many different ways. So research done at universities can be licensed. It can be utilized by companies, and companies started to see what's going on at a university as actually something that they can leverage and work with and develop. [KARA] Neil Thompson, who's also been on this podcast, who's both an economist but also has a tech background and is at CSAIL, tried to put some numbers to this and surveyed a bunch of companies, and 2/3 of them had sourced innovation from university.

3:42 But I think that the way that this kind of relationship is often thought about in the popular imagination is like, on the individual level, Mark Zuckerberg in his dorm. I mean, Bill Gates, I mean, these are two Harvard examples. Drew Houston created Dropbox. The idea came out of being at MIT. Fred Smith, who passed away recently, came up basically when he was an undergraduate at Yale, I think, with the idea of FedEx, which he then spent the rest of his life building out and certainly worked at, so not that doesn't happen because it clearly does happen.

4:22 But give me the other side of what the partnership that's bigger than the individual person looks like. [LORI] So when the individual person, so you look at this two parts to that. So I think of research to reality, so the thing that the student is working on or has a concept of that they're working on in their dorm room, that yeah, sure, they can build that can be an initial beginnings of a startup. But then everything else at the startup needs, they need customers, they need to grow. They need VC or other kinds of funding.

4:57 So when you look at it from both sides, the university is obviously teaching the student and helping the student, and most universities also have different resources for startups to help with. But alone, having that one person go out and do a startup, how does industry come into that play? They are the ones that will be that first customer. They'll be the ones that ultimately usually do some funding to that, and they'll be the ones that may acquire that company and fill a piece that they need in their bigger picture and give them their exit strategy.

5:31 Some companies want that. Others don't, but it really is a symbiotic type relationship. Many of the companies that I work with here at MIT, they don't even know what the possibilities are. We'll show them a startup that is taking this really novel concept, and they're like, wow, they're actually doing that? And it's kind of a safe space because the startup is testing and seeing if it really has legs. And company really hasn't invested anything. They're not losing anything by watching it grow, see what it comes, and then, yeah, they could be a customer and/or they could invest or take a buyer.

6:13 [KARA] And do you think universities increasingly want access to the next person who starts a really important company, but it's like in the stage of infancy where it needs help? [LORI] Companies. Companies want access. Yeah, companies do. OK. Because again, the whole idea of innovation, and no one can do it all. No one has all the ideas. All it's not possible. So when companies come to a university, they don't know what they don't know, and brand new fields are being invented here. It's really the cutting edge. It's amazing the research that's being done.

6:52 And sometimes they will see something that happens in a research field or in a startup that they didn't realize was possible, and then they can productize it or bring it in. And I'd love to use the story, which is in the book. It's an amalgamation. I think of a few stories, but it's from the Media Lab, and I love this story because what researchers do, their main goal is to solve problems. And it doesn't mean like a company comes in and says, oh, I need a piece of software that does x. No, it's like a real big problem.

7:28 How can I solve this problem that's going to make an impact in the world? And the story from the Media Lab goes, there was this researcher whose mother was losing her eyesight, and she had to take six pills a day, couldn't see which one was which. So again, he figured, I can solve this problem, created this little sensor that goes on the bottom of each pill bottle, pick up one, played a song, Mary Had a Little Lamb. Next one, the ABCs. So she just associated the right song with the right pill. He didn't think, oh, I'm going to create a sensor that is going to be this revolutionary new product.

8:03 But a company came in, saw that possibility, and they got an entirely new product out of it. So the interesting thing is the company didn't know that this was even a possibility, never mind something they could actually productize, and that is very cool. Like, they really don't know what they don't know. And really, the cutting edge, bleeding edge in a lot of things is happening at the universities. [KARA] So we were talking about individuals and scaling up the idea of a new product, startups. But I think people also don't realize the-- and I didn't realize that much before I read this-- the degree of the kind of alliances that exist that go beyond between industry and academia because it's really neither.

9:01 And people know about universities, people know about businesses, but this is like in some sort of in-between area that doesn't get a lot of attention. But what do those look like that aren't just helping one person with a really cool product? [LORI] Yeah, absolutely. So the book goes over so many different styles and formats for what these can look like. They can be very small. And I think I have some different examples in there from University of Tampa and their sales program. That's a smaller scale program with just helping students make connections and lunch and learn.

9:40 But then there's much more involved programs like the Takeda alliance we have here at MIT, where there's multiple patents that have come out of it. [KARA] Takeda is a big pharmaceutical company. [LORI] Big pharmaceutical company. [KARA] When you talk to universities around the country, do you feel like AI has changed the relationship between businesses and universities? And I think of it partially on the education piece because if something changes a lot technically, and you got your degree 20 years ago, and you don't have to be that old, but if you got you're in your 40s, and you got your degree in your early 20s, things have changed.

10:20 [LORI] Wholeheartedly, and I will say, our very most successful executive education course is one that we work in partnership with the Sloan School of Management on, we created AI in business strategy. It is fantastic because it is not in any one industry or any one place, and we've refreshed it, so it stays current. But it is an online course that anyone can take to say, OK, in my role, yeah, I went to school 20 years ago, and we didn't talk about AI. How does this affect me now? How does it affect my business? How does it affect what I will be doing in the next few years?

10:58 How do I think about this? So something like that is a relatively easy way to stay on top of what's happening. And again, we put more and more out every year this fall we're having deploying AI. How do you choose where you should actually deploy it? And I think Neil Thompson has a great case study on this. Do you have enough data? Do you have the right infrastructure? Is it really an AI problem? How do you think through it? Because AI also is very expensive. And if you don't have enough data to train it on your particular problem, that's not a good use of anything.

11:36 So anyway, long story, but yeah. [KARA] Yes, he talks a little bit about tuna fish and how canned tuna fish with a company who was talking to it just wasn't worth applying AI to because if you think about how long canned tuna fish can stay on the shelf, it's quite a while. AI is expensive. And so yeah, OK, fresh like steak or shrimp. But anyway, I really remember that the canned tuna fish takeaway from this whole thing. There must be times when university— I mean, businesses come to universities, there's a partnership, and the way they think about things does not align because these are two very different cultures and two different incentive systems.

12:27 So, just because you're a business in California and UCLA is right near you does not mean necessarily things are all going to be hunky-dory. So talk about where things can break apart. [LORI] Oh, absolutely. Thank you for that question because as much as we say we need each other really now more than ever that I talk about the innovation supply chain with those raw materials of ideas and concepts how but industry is the one that actually takes them to make an impact and commercialize, but getting to that point is really difficult.

12:58 Culture is so very different. Even the calendars don't align. I just had another group in this morning and saying, well, it's summer, so it's really quiet. There's not a lot of students around. So it wasn't for them summer’s summer. It's still working. But when you think about alignment, the culture, and the challenges, I talk about intangible and tangible. And a lot of times, again, because when industry thinks of working with someone external, it's often kind of a vendor type logic where again, I pay you x or we do x, I get y, and it's a very tangible type of thing.

13:38 But it a very important thing of working with universities is there's a whole host of intangible that come along with it. And understanding the entire picture is very important, and I think particularly like in talent, how do you participate? Sure, you can say I hired x number of students, and they're contributing, and it's great. But what are the other things you're able to do? Brand visibility, make hiring a lot easier on campus. Are you able to participate in any advisory councils or things where you can actually help students understand real problems, real-world problems In your guest lecture and some of the classes on ways that your company is looking at technology, again, that visibility, that understanding in this talent just talent pool.

14:27 There's so many ways to do that. It didn't get you something tangible that minute. But you may very well have people who've gone on for after they've graduated, and they're coming to you because I heard about-- you talked to my class when I was a sophomore or something like that, and it's important. [KARA] Is it hard to convince businesses that isn't a waste of time? Or are they like-- [LORI] It depends on the business. Some of them really get it, and they're really good at it. And they have really advanced programs of how they think about things.

15:02 [KARA] Talk a little more about that tech race and the haves and have-nots and what you mean and what you see happening. [LORI] So when you think about things like applications in AI and tech talent and some of the things that you said about taking whole groups, there are the large tech companies that are amazing. They're doing incredible work that doesn't always filter down to some of the other companies, companies that are still really the good companies. But they don't understand how to internalize some of these solutions, and they don't have the big brand names.

15:41 So it's also harder for them to attract the talent to help them create these solutions. So I say, it's those companies more than anyone really needs to start investing time, connections with different universities that align well with what they need because as the time moves forward, they're going to need that talent more and more. [KARA] You make a very interesting point in the book, too, that I hadn't thought about in terms of timelines. And this is like, those are the big timeline. But when you think about how long professors who are let's say, on the cutting edge of self-driving are at a university, it can be decades.

16:23 It can be, right. But for people in the private sector, I think you said something like the average time at a company is four years. So it's tricky because if you're trying to learn more about self-driving and you have an alliance with UT Austin or whatever, if they're there for a long time, and they've built this thing. And then, every four years, the person who runs your program turns over or let's say more, let's say it's a little more. That's just an average. You can have an alliance that doesn't bear a lot of fruit because it's always hard to get up to speed on something you don't know that much about.

17:04 [LORI] Absolutely, and that is something I also cover is, again, this is a partnership. When you really look at truly being able to realize real benefit. And that needs to be managed by a group of people. It can't be just one person. But it should be one person's job, and I think I talk in the book about the different places that we connect with so that multiple people in an organization are familiar with what they're doing with this university, how they're getting value. And then if one person moves on, the whole entire thing doesn't fall apart.

17:39 And that is so incredibly important because people do change jobs. [KARA] Have you seen that happen where somebody moves on and the thing falls apart? [LORI] Yeah, absolutely. [KARA] So it's like a lot of money has been spent. [LORI] And it's really unfortunate because, again, yes, a of money's been spent. There's been a lot of traction. A lot of value has been taken. But now, you have another person who it kind of just falls in their lap. They don't know what to do with it. They don't know what the overarching goal was.

18:07 And quite frankly, they just got something else put on their already full plate. They don't really have trouble. They don't really have time to come up to speed. So in making it really someone's job and having it be a purposeful role that this is something that you're going to gain value from over time, again, yeah, there'll be immediate wins, sure. But things are changing, and things are-- new fields are coming up like quantum. We're having great strides in quantum. But how is that going to affect everything? So it's again, knowing all of these different pieces and having that visibility and having a team be able to manage that and be able to not only manage the relationship with the university, but also internalize it and let people internally know what's going on will have a distribution system.

18:55 I do talk about Steve Whitaker from BT. He is like-- in all my years of doing this, he was truly the best, we say, POC, point of contact, for a company because he was present on campus. He came. He learned about things. He asked great questions, participated a lot, always had the different business units at BT in his mind of how he was going to make connections, and he shared, he shared so much internally through the organization. And we had many things that we did with them over the years when there was a lot of great ROI.

19:33 So that type of sharing and making sure their connections is just really critical. It's critical to the success. [KARA] You've also given this example before and this is reaching a little bit back, but the advent of microwaves as being almost like a side product that nobody anticipated, that something-- a project threw off. So do you want to talk about that? [LORI] Yeah, so back during World War II, the Rad Lab at MIT really worked on radar, and the objective was radar to develop for the military at that point. But apparently, the radar system they were working on, the researcher who had a chocolate bar in his pocket, and the chocolate bar melts.

20:26 And why is the chocolate bar melting? And from that, to go and explore that piece, they were able to determine microwaves. And in fact, the first microwave was called the radar wave instead of a microwave, microwaves. And then that became something that is in every household now. It had an enormous impact. And along the same lines of you, this is something that wasn't what you anticipated, that was the purpose of the main research, but it was this ancillary thing that kind of happened, which is the beauty of research in universities, is, yes, we have a goal, but we can explore other things that might come up, and many things can.

21:14 [KARA] I mean, it feels like we're in a time where there's obviously less funding for universities. It's been happening for a long time through state governments. So if you think about the funding of statewide university systems, it's been a slow decrease in funding long time. And I think you have a chart showing really since the 1960s, the percentage of our national budget that we spend on science has been decreasing, and obviously, NIH, NSF, they're under a lot of stress now. Does that make meek universities want to turn more to businesses?

21:56 Does that change these programs? Do they start to go away? I mean, what's the effect of that? [LORI] Well, I mean, honestly, I think it's incredibly unfortunate effect because governments around the world are pouring a lot of money into their universities for advances in AI and things like that, and it puts the US in a difficult situation. But I think it's a very real problem that many universities and many faculty now are looking to partner with industry. Again, the number one thing that every faculty member that I work with says is they want to have a real impact.

22:33 They want to do something that's going to benefit people. And if they need funding, yes, to do that, and businesses have real challenges and real problems that if they can be solved, they really will benefit people. So more and more, industry is becoming a very-- I mean, they've always been an important partner but to even more people than before. [KARA] Yeah, so maybe in the absence of NIH and NSF funding or with a reduction, if people say, I have a really great idea, I want it to get onto the public, business is their way increasingly to make it happen.

23:11 [LORI] Yeah, absolutely, yeah. [KARA] Finally, I wonder if you can talk a little bit. This is a little bit bigger picture. But I know there have been some economists, John Gruber and Simon Johnson here at MIT who've thought about this, but there's a way in which this kind of alliance all over the country, really all over the world, business and universities, has become a way that I think cities now think about, how do we become competitive? And the obvious examples would be like the Bay Area with Stanford and Berkeley and obviously Harvard and MIT and many, many other places and the Cambridge, Boston area.

23:51 I wonder if you get a lot of inquiries about that and how you see that factoring into this. [LORI] Oh, absolutely. I mean, there are many different areas that want to create, kind of like this Kendall ecosystem. And I think I talk about that somewhat in the book too, and I have my periodic chart of innovation elements is, it's not just the University sitting by itself, and it's not just an industry sitting by itself. It takes a lot of different players to come in to really create that ecosystem. And much like the story of Silicon Valley where you've got the researchers, initially, they wanted jobs for their students, to have companies come there.

24:30 But not only is IT companies employ students, students also create new startups. Startups then hire more students. They create more things within their ecosystem accelerators. The VCs come in. You've got community groups, and people who splinter off and have different specialized skill training. So all of these things grow into this wonderful cluster, and you have a booming economic ecosystem for innovation. [KARA] Do you think it's harder to create that kind of ecosystem? Like, I wonder if you just have the elements of you have a university and you have businesses.

25:11 Does it just happen? Is it more complicated? Like, do you need a lot of people creating these linkages? [LORI] I think that's one thing Natasha talks about in her piece, in the focus feature of my book, is she talks about these catalyzers and boundary spanners, who can see the different ways to match and pull together. I mean, really, nothing happens in a vacuum. You have to have people who can see the connections and see how if you put it together, you're really going to start moving, and you're going to create something really special.

25:39 [KARA] Lori Glover, author of Innovation Alchemy, managing director of Global Strategic Alliances at CSAIL. Thanks so much. This is great. [LORI] Thank you.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Innovation Alchemy: Industry and Academia with Lori Glover"?

Kara (Host), Lori Glover (Guest).

What is "Innovation Alchemy: Industry and Academia with Lori Glover" about?

Lori Glover discusses the intersection of academia and industry, highlighting how collaborative innovation can lead to successful products like Gatorade, which originated from a need identified by the University of Florida's football coach and was developed in partnership with the university's chemistry department. She emphasizes the mutual benefits of such partnerships, illustrating how…

What is mentioned in this MIT CSAIL Alliances episode?

9 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Lori Glover, Innovation Alchemy, MIT, Steve Whitaker, Bayh-Dole Act, NSF. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Innovation Alchemy: Industry and Academia with Lori Glover"?

The episode runs 26 min; the transcript is about 4,132 words in 39 timestamped sections.

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