Halfway in,halfway out: Navigating uncertainty in collaborative doctoral training

Abstract

Collaborative research between universities and private companies is increasingly recognized as a vehicle for facilitating knowledge exchange and closing the gap between industry and academia. With doctoral training taking on an increasingly interdisciplinary character and focusing on collaborations between universities and industry, PhD students’ roles extend across organizational and knowledge boundaries. This introduces greater uncertainty in the doctoral process as candidates need to serve multiple stakeholders. While university-industry collaborations and academic engagement are well-studied topics, research in this area has overlooked the pivotal role of doctoral students and their experiences from collaborative research. Our study underscores the uncertainty that arises as doctoral candidates navigate the dynamic interplay between academia and industry and makes two original contributions - first, it identifies three distinct types of uncertainty that emerge in collaborative doctoral training, and second, it presents a set of self-management approaches for navigating uncertainty by examining the practices adopted by PhD students engaged in university-industry research projects.

Keywords

doctoral students collaborative research doctoral training uncertainty

Introduction

The growing emphasis on the entrepreneurial aspect and the university’s ‘third mission’ has heightened the participation of industrial partners in academic research and its societal influence (Compagnucci and Spigarelli, 2020; Miller et al., 2021). Consequently, there is a greater focus on developing doctoral programs that motivate PhD students to engage in applied research conducted with private companies (Moghadam-Saman, 2020; Plantec et al., 2023). Universities, governments, and private enterprises are formulating strategies that facilitate the knowledge and technology transfer through collaborations between academia and industry, encompassing joint research initiatives, mobility schemes, and consultancy services.

With the rising prevalence of university-industry research collaborations, there is a growing expectation for doctoral students to adeptly navigate the intricate dynamics between the academic and private sectors (Assbring and Nuur, 2017; Thune, 2010). Surprisingly, investigations into university-industry interactions have largely overlooked the contributions of doctoral students and their encounters within collaborative research (Strengers, 2014; Thune, 2009), despite their recognition as cross-sector and disciplinary boundary spanners (Kaplan et al., 2017; Mars and Moravec, 2022) and as the real ‘drivers’ of research (Benmore, 2016). Doctoral students involved in industry-oriented research projects often face challenges related conflicting expectations between academic and industry which can generate ambiguity and confusion regarding the overall goals of doctoral research (Kihlander et al., 2011; Kitagawa, 2014). Furthermore, challenges potentially arise from the collaborative doctoral context, over which PhD students may have little control. It is therefore crucial to understand how collaborative research influences doctoral training and how PhD students themselves navigate an environment marked by uncertainty, ambiguity, and confusion.

In our study, we explore the experiences of doctoral students involved university-industry collaborative research and provide a detailed account of how doctoral students interact with research partners from the private sector. We identify three types of uncertainty in the collaborative doctoral process and highlight a range of self-management approaches for navigating uncertainty proposed by our informants. Lastly, we provide practical recommendations for universities, private companies, and policy makers.

Doctoral training and university-industry collaborations

Based on the premise that effective knowledge transfer between university and industry can be a significant source for innovation (Laursen and Salter, 2004; Siegel et al., 2004), industrial PhD programs in Denmark, Sweden and Norway fund doctoral and postdoctoral research addressing issues with clear relevance for the host company (Bröchner and Sezer, 2020; Forskningsraadet, 2021; Innovation Fund Denmark, 2021). Since the mid-2000s, Denmark has actively pursued the policy objective of enhancing the ties between universities and industry. Various models of university-industry collaboration exist within PhD programs, offering different avenues for industry engagement (Sjöö and Hellström, 2019). For example, companies have the option to fund industrial PhD candidates who continue their employment while undertaking doctoral studies. Alternatively, industry may provide funding for PhD students through project grants, supporting partly or fully their doctoral research (Bröchner and Sezer, 2020).

Previous research has indicated that doctoral students engaged in collaborative research projects can mitigate uncertainty for the firm in its innovation endeavors. This occurs as the host company absorbs and leverages the external knowledge offered by the project. (Kitagawa, 2014; Locatelli et al., 2021). The firms that embark on collaborative research with university scientists are often knowledge intensive and employ professionals with research qualifications (Fontana et al., 2006). This can create synergies between scientists and increase the intensity the scientific knowledge exchange between project members in collaborative research setting. Therefore, the size of the firms, their R&D intensity and understanding of the requirements put on the PhD students by their scientific community are important factors for the outcomes of the projects and PhD experiences (Assbring and Nuur, 2017; Thune, 2010).

Insights into doctoral experiences are essential for both evaluating the success and the learning outcomes of collaborative research projects, but also when aiming to understand the dynamics of collaborations at the individual level. In their study of collaborative mega-projects and the microfoundations of open innovation, Locatelli et al. (2021) highlight the importance of individual learning for PhD students by shifting the focus from the tangible outcomes of collaborations, such as patents and products, to the intangible outcomes such as new knowledge gained, ideas for new areas of research, and personal skills development.

Research on the impact of industry involvement in doctoral projects has found that although collaborative research projects address specific industry needs and aim to develop firm-specific knowledge, they seldom contribute to high-risk areas of the firm or generate knowledge in areas critical for the firm’s business (Butcher and Jeffrey, 2007; Miozzo et al., 2016). Instead the focus is placed on areas with long-term business goals where deep science is needed, and is therefore unlikely that doctoral students experience pressure to generate results or tensions deriving from knowledge protection dilemmas (Thune, 2010). In our case, however, most doctoral students were involved in projects within novel research areas with high business criticality, and therefore, often experienced situations where industry partners are unable to provide detailed information of commercial products or internal firm processes. Although students might not be directly pressured to generate quick and useful results for the company, based on the data collected for our study, students experience uncertainty when navigating the private partners’ shifting strategic objectives and interests.

Uncertainty in doctoral training

Doctoral training can be a process marked by experiences of great uncertainty. As a social process produced in a complex context and marked by uneven power relationships (Hay and Samra-Fredericks, 2016; Weatherall, 2019), uncertainty about doctoral processes has been identified as one of the main stressors in early-stage doctoral students. Lack of clarity about structure, research direction and scientific freedom are among the most common causes for the uncertainty experienced by doctoral students (Cornwall et al., 2019).

Unlike undergraduate studies where teaching is carefully curated and laboratory experiments are stage-managed by lecturers, the doctoral process represents far less controlled conditions for training and research (Delamont and Atkinson, 2001; McAlpine and Amundsen, 2009). Soon after embarking on their doctoral studies, PhD students realize that science is more complex and that results from their experiments can often turn out negative. To become professional scientists, doctoral students, however, are expected to focus on generating usable results, and master specific tacit skills to become independent researchers. Once they become professional and independent scientists, they focus on writing public accounts of their research where they omit the contingencies and uncertainties of their research (Delamont and Atkinson, 2001). This socialization into the ‘professional science’ domain leaves little room for understanding failure and the prospective frustrations research may bring. Understanding that research results can often be negative and acknowledging the high degree of uncertainty in research, is however a crucial aspect of appreciating the process of scientific discoveries. Uncertainty, from that perspective, could therefore be a formative experience for becoming an independent scientist (Elliot, 2022).

Uncertainties in doctoral training addressed in prior research are often associated with research structure, career direction, lack of clarity around expectations, and limited understanding of what life as an academic entail (Cornwall et al., 2019; McAlpine and Amundsen, 2009). Doctoral training often requires individuals to embrace the role of a ‘learner’ once more (Devos et al., 2017), which entails embracing the unfamiliar aspects of doctoral studies. Reverting to this learner status, however, involves navigating the novel challenges that doctoral work presents, even if doing so feels uncomfortable or reminiscent of past experiences (Elliot, 2022).

Engaging in doctoral research in collaboration with the industry introduces an added layer of uncertainty, stemming from the dual emphasis on research focus, anticipated results, and jointly defined project objectives. Furthermore, doctoral students are immersed in industrial process influenced by evolving commercial objectives and characterized by a need for confidentiality. Hence, our research aims to investigate the perceived experience of uncertainty during doctoral training and how doctoral candidates navigate this uncertainty in the context of collaborative research.

Methodology

Research context

This study is part of a larger research project exploring the microfoundations of university-industry interactions in collaborative research projects. In our article we zoom in on the experiences of PhD students who conduct their doctoral studies in joint research projects with private sector partner(s) in Denmark. In Denmark, industrial PhD programs have gained significant traction, marking a notable shift in the landscape of doctoral research. Collaborations between academia and industrial partners have become increasingly prevalent, signaling a departure from the traditionally academic-centric doctoral studies towards more interdisciplinary and applied research work. These programs aim at providing doctoral candidates with insights into industry-specific challenges and to bridging the gap between theory and practice. As this trend continues to gain momentum, boundaries between academia and industry blur and collaborative research emerges as the cornerstone of contemporary research practices.

Data collection and analysis

The data for this study consists of 16 interviews with doctoral students from the domain of food and nutrition studies. From the 16 students, 14 conduct their doctoral studies as part of a large collaboration research project involving industry partners and 2 are enrolled in an industrial PhD program where they work on their own research project, supervised by a university scientist, and hosted by a private company. During the interview process, all PhDs were at an advanced stage of their training and were able to reflect on and provide detailed accounts on the challenges regarding navigating their own research in a university-industry collaboration setting. The interview protocol consisted of questions related to the general experiences of the PhD students, the involvement of the private partner in their research, and how PhD students approached challenges. The interview protocol evolved over time to address the issues about uncertainty, which emerged from the data, and how the PhD students navigated ambiguous situations related to the nature of collaborative research. On average, each interview lasted 48 minutes. All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim by the first author.

We adopted an abductive approach for the data analysis (Tavory and Timmermans, 2014) which implies and iterative and cyclical process of identifying, confirming and evaluating inferences, which may provide a plausible explanation of the observed phenomenon (Sætre and Van de Ven, 2021). This approach allowed us to advance existing theoretical concepts grounded deeply in data and guided fully by the accounts of the interviewees.

Collectively we generated ‘hunches’ (Sætre and Van de Ven, 2021) - inferences to address and provide a plausible explanation (Locke et al., 2008), for the problem we chose to study: the uncertainty in doctoral training related to participating in collaborative research. After evaluating these inferences, we arrived at our analytical understanding of three types of uncertainties and a set of interlinked self-management practices which PhD students adopt for navigating these uncertainties.

Findings

The major themes which emerged from the interviews regarding uncertainty relate to (1) uncertainty about research freedom; (2) uncertainty about partners’ objectives; (3) uncertainty about access boundaries and how PhD students navigate these uncertainties through a set of self-management approaches.

Uncertainty about research freedom

At the interviews, doctoral students asserted that the private companies that they collaborate with adopt an exploratory research approach and prioritize generating knowledge through developing analytical methods as opposed to focusing on developing new commercial products. At one of the interviews, a PhD student in food chemistry shared that the topic of his dissertation changed from ‘improving product Alpha’ to ‘characterizing product Alpha’. That change, he contended, was due to the freedom he had in designing the study and the focus on deep knowledge which the company prioritizes. The PhD candidate explained that the collaborating industry partner focused on basic science, and it is the company’s interest to develop deep knowledge, therefore allowing the PhD students to adopt an exploratory research approach. Doctoral students find this interest in fundamental knowledge to be a source of motivation, as they observe that companies value their scientific approaches and are willing to support their exploration and development of their own research designs.

The openness to exploratory research and letting doctoral students be the ‘captains of their own ships’, as one student put it, could however bring confusion and uncertainty especially at the initial stage of the PhD process. Several PhD students describe the initial phase of their doctoral training as confusing, unstructured and ‘very long until you were sure about which direction you want to go for’. Additionally, they held mixed feelings regarding how the industry partners’ expectations should be incorporated into the individual research design. The following quote captures how several doctoral students described the beginning of their PhDs in collaboration with a commercial partner:

For me, the uncertainties that came from the company would be not knowing what they really want me to do. The role I should play in this project. Or what kind of final achievement they want me to achieve. From the beginning, I raised my uncertainty and my questions about, what the ultimate goal is for them.

Although the PhD students are appreciative of the freedom, there is a general expectation that the partner company would be setting not only the frame for the research project, but also that they should suggest what the individual PhD students should focus on. A PhD student working on a multi-stakeholder research project shared:

In the beginning, it was hard to have all the freedom because I thought somehow the PhD project was described beforehand, and I was just expecting that everyone had a a clearer picture of what I should be doing, but that was not the case, so it took me a while to figure out that I should just decide what I want to do myself.

In line with literature on collaborative doctoral training (Malfroy, 2011; Strengers, 2014), PhD students are not fully aware of the boundaries they are able to set with regards to designing their own research, especially at the outset of their studies. Although they are aware that the companies should not be ‘guiding’ their research, the doctoral students shared that they expected higher involvement from their private partners at the beginning of the research projects as this would create a clearer plan for designing their research. This presents a paradox which doctoral students try to resolve by finding the balance between involving their industry stakeholders while also protecting their scientific freedom and independently designing their own individual research.

Uncertainty about partners’ objectives

The role of the industry partners in the PhD projects we observed was largely advisory. In contrast to the expectations of some PhD students, the company ‘only’ suggests what could be of commercial interest:

The industry [partner] understands that their role is more on the supervisory board, rather than to be an active supervisor in this case [individual PhD project]. They try to give advice on what is industrially interesting to explore deeper. But almost always they present an option for me, that industrially speaking, this is what they are interested in, and it is up to me to decide what I can take as part of the project.

The advisory role leaves space for interpretation regarding what is considered ‘interesting’ for the private partners. Additionally, the strategic objectives of the industry partners are often unclear to the PhD students. The partners also shift their priorities over time, which inherently influences the ambiguity in the collaborative research.

A PhD student in consumer behavior explained that she started her research investigating the properties of a specific fruit drink which the company was producing. She worked with the samples provided by the company in the first 3 months of her PhD research. At a meeting, several months after the start of her project, the company announced that the drink she was working on is no longer business critical, and instead the research project switched focus to another, novel, product currently developed at the company. Although the PhD student was excited to focus her research on a product with high commercial priority, this shift entailed a complete revision of the PhD plan and time lost on investigating the properties of an obsolete product:

I try to be as accepting as I can. Of course, sometimes you get a little bit of a shock, like when I have to completely change my project after a month.

In another case, a PhD student who was conducting an industrial PhD and working at the company’s production plant, shared that after conducting one of his major studies, the host company asked him not to include the study as part of his dissertation due to the commercial impact of the results. Despite being excited that he had discovered something which have a large business potential for the host company, the shift meant that his dissertation must be revised.

Parts of my work doing my PhD is confidential and wasn't allowed to be published; actually, most of my last year of the PhD, I was working on a project which was supposed to be published. But in the end it was decided not to. So, I used 9-10 months of work and I almost had a manuscript ready, which couldn't be published because they saw the potential in the commercial work and the commercial projects. And so it was implemented in those projects. So, I wasted a lot of energy and time which couldn't really be implemented in my project.

While enthusiastic about contributing to the company, the PhD student noted that the planning and execution of research activities could have been significantly more efficient if his industry partners had been aware of the crucial nature of the research he was conducting.

The lack of clarity regarding the strategic objectives of the industry partners poses a significant challenge for PhD students as they attempt to situate their own research within this context. Consequently, this uncertainty necessitates numerous revisions and iterations in the development of their research design and thesis structure. It forces doctoral students to continually adapt and refine their approach as they grapple with shifting industry priorities and evolving project objectives. This dynamic environment demands a flexible and resilient approach from the students, who must continually assess and align their work with the ever-changing landscape of their projects.

Uncertainty about access boundaries

Most of the PhD students interviewed for this study collaborate with partners from the food and beverage industry. Due to the growing influence of technology in the industry and the substantial investments necessary for innovations, confidentiality has emerged as a crucial strategy for safeguarding product advancements (Zhang and Baden-Fuller, 2010). Tensions and dilemmas regarding sharing and protecting knowledge are therefore inherent in much of the research conducted in collaborative settings. PhD students shared that it is often difficult to navigate access boundaries that have been set by the industry partners. One of the PhD student shared:

When I wrote my first article, I was comparing four types of the waste product Beta, which came from four different types of production. And to compare these, I also needed to describe something about how they have been produced. And it was a bit difficult because The Company didn't want to tell me how they were produced. And they allowed me to see some flowcharts, but I was not allowed to use the flowcharts, if you can understand what I mean.

All interviewed PhD students, except for one who was not directly involved in product or processing work, have encountered situations where they had to work with incomplete or imperfect information during their research. Even though students emphasized their positive relationships with industry partners, they also articulated a unique role for themselves—one that doesn’t fit squarely within the realms of pure academic researchers or industry scientists. They expressed that they often felt like in-between industry and academia:

You are placed in a company half in - half out, but you're not totally in and you're not totally out of business. So, you are halfway in, halfway out. You are not invited to department meetings or such because, I understand why, because they are talking about very sensitive day-to-day projects, their day-to-day work and I don't need to know because I'm not part of it. And perhaps they talk about some secret things as well to their company.

This statement encapsulates the role of PhD students in collaborative research projects. As researchers, they are tasked with producing practical results and adding value for their private partners and the scientific community. Consequently, they must engage in ongoing negotiations for access and adapt to the knowledge boundaries established by their partner companies. A PhD student in nutrition science who was developing an analytical model for investigating the properties of a commercial product, described this process of negotiation as follows:

I know it's difficult because they want to keep it a secret or they have to go back and ask if they can share the information with us. But if The Company could give us more information on the products, that would be really nice. Because we are kind of doing this in the blind sometimes, and that takes a long time to get the information.

Access to industry insights and specific product knowledge is a dynamic process. PhD students, along with their academic supervisors, engaged in continual negotiations to define the boundaries within which they can conduct their research and generate fresh insights. In the subsequent section, we delve into the self-management approaches that PhD students employ to effectively navigate these intricate and evolving uncertainties.

Self-management approaches for navigating uncertainty

Dynamic engagement with industry partners

To align expectations with industry partners, especially at the beginning of collaborative research, PhD students emphasized the importance of open and frequent communication. One student, with prior industry experience, opted for bi-weekly online meetings instead of the initially planned biannual ones to ensure continuous engagement:

We always meet our industrial partners to discuss our research progress and also if we are according to plan and in line with our expectations. But it has to be often, because six months, it's a very long time from a company’s perspective. So, you need to keep in constant communication with them… So, what I did in my project was organize fortnightly update meetings… just to update them on what I'm doing and then how they are doing. ...The communication was not very transparent [in the beginning], because if we talk to them after one month, then sometimes their priority may change. So, I started with a different product, but after two, three months, they asked me if I could work on another product. And three months is a long time.

To ensure they remained ‘according to plan’ while aligning with the company’s shifting priorities, PhD students had to understand the limitations set by their industry partners concerning confidential information. They emphasized the need for clear boundaries regarding what was confidential and what wasn’t:

So, we need to listen to them, what their limitations are. And then we need to be vocal about what we have to do in order to gain a PhD; you need to have your boundaries set clear from the very beginning. So, we need to be very careful with that confidential track - what is confidential and what is not confidential.

The students faced challenges when changes occurred in their research designs due to either the company’s shifting focus or the confidentiality of the research area. To avoid such disruptions, they proposed continuous discussions with their industry partners about strategic goals and information access.

The issue of knowledge boundaries was a common concern among the PhD students, as their research often involved high-value and competitive areas for their industry partners. They found that transparent communication, where they provided their research insights to the industry partners, helped navigate these boundaries. The following quotes elaborate this approach:

I always use the same strategy. If I provide them information and prove that this is not going to work, and if they don't give me the needed information, only then I'll push for more information. If you want it to work, I need the information. (PhD student in Chemometrics)

We have to tell the company what these things are; that are necessary from my PhD perspective. So, we give them some information as well that I need to do this for my PhD. (PhD student in Consumer Behavior)

Frequent meetings with industry partners, where students shared their research insights, helped enhance understanding and acknowledgment of the dual nature of their projects, academic and industrial. To manage complex social relationships and communication issues, PhD students actively engaged with project stakeholders and continuously negotiated knowledge boundaries by providing insights and requirements from their own research.

On-site industry visits

Visiting the industry site emerged as a key practice to build trust and facilitate communication. These visits granted students access to labs, pilot plants, and advanced instruments not available at their universities. They also enabled interactions with a broader group of industry scientists. All PhD students who completed on-sites visits informed that they were able to obtain product and processing information which they were unable to get through the regular project meetings:

I even visited their facility to produce my samples. So the recipe that I developed here in the university lab, I could scale it up in their [company’s] pilot plant. They were very transparent about their facilities, what I can use, what I cannot use, and then I could use their facilities to build real actual samples that will go to the consumers as well.

Being able to produce their own research samples, the PhD students have access to information which they might need to provide later when presenting and publishing research results. Having more transparency does not necessarily mean having better access to information; as indicated in the quote, the visiting doctoral students were able to draw boundaries between what is considered confidential by the firm and what is not.

In some cases, students gained more information than expected during site visits, leading to expanded networks and enhanced knowledge of the processes under investigation. One PhD students informed that during his on-site visit, he met with an industry scientist who was responsible for producing the samples used in joint project. The industry scientist and the PhD shared similar education and research backgrounds and were therefore able to exchange knowledge valuable for both parties.

I just made sure to talk with as many people as possible. And he [the industry scientist] had the same background as me and was working with product Alpha, so I just had a chat with him. Then I could plan more detailed my upcoming work… It's not that I'm trying to unfold all the secrets of the Company. I am just trying to make sure that I'm in a good position to do relevant research.

Visiting the industry site helped navigating uncertainties about the relevance of research and access limitations. The PhD students were able to access a new pool of knowledge - in some cases, technical details of manufacturing processes and in others determining what knowledge is available and what is ‘hidden’. Important to note is that uncertainty is not fully eliminated from the doctoral process. When, asked to reflect on the situations where they experience confusions, ambiguity, and uncertainty, PhD students implied that uncertainty can have generative effects and that ‘working in the blind’, in some cases, means that the doctoral students find alternative ways to get information and generate knowledge.

Acknowledging limitations of collaborative research

Accepting and acknowledging uncertainty played a vital role in dealing with the ambiguity inherent in scientific research. PhD students realized that exploratory and open approaches were often more suitable due to the evolving nature of their collaborative projects. This required aligning expectations with stakeholders and accepting the unpredictable aspects of research.

You have to be very pragmatic about your timeline... So you need to be prepared for these kinds of changes because it takes away your time; you need to adjust to that and have a bigger picture of the whole project when this abrupt change happens and then try to think what is important and what is not important and prioritize your work based on that.

Anticipating that changes affecting the PhD research plan might appear have an important role for addressing timescale and communication problems. The concerns of ambiguity regarding what the commercial partner in the project is interested in changes over time. A PhD student participating in the collaborative project where the issue of uncertainty, informed that he recognizes the changes he might need to make to his plan, but he also realized that ‘no science goes to waste’. As projects progressed, students became more pragmatic about their PhD research, focusing on their results rather than solely on meeting the company’s demands. They recognized that research was often highly complex and difficult to directly link to specific product development.

What I can see is the biggest change in my approach to it. I made sure to put myself in a place where I know my project and I have a clear idea of my own PhD project. But of course, it's still adaptable. And, of course, I think independently, I know if you're part of a big research project and my PhD will change along with it. Change is necessary. Change can also be a good thing.

In the later stages of collaboration, students viewed their PhD research as a distinct component within the joint project, allowing them to maintain research focus while adapting to evolving expectations and changes. This detachment proves as an important aspect of the students’ approaches to grapple with the expectations of developing a coherent PhD dissertation. Being exposed to multiple changes along the way, doctoral students learn to adapt to multiple expectations while at the same time focus on their own individual research.’

Discussion & conclusion

With the increased focus on third mission of the university, multiple roles are being assigned to doctoral students, expected to facilitated the knowledge transfer between industry and academia (Teelken et al., 2023; Thune, 2010). Through collaborative research, they act as the ‘bridging scientists’, connecting the fundamental and traditional ‘open science’ with the more applied ‘proprietary science’ (Kitagawa, 2014). They are also often the ‘workers’ who conduct the experiments and lab work in large research projects, acting both as knowledge producers and the vehicles for the dissemination of that knowledge (Mangematin and Robin, 2003).

Many doctoral students, however, are likely to enter the doctoral process with limited prior experience in collaborative research. Prior research have informed that despite the significant ‘cultural divide’ between industry and academia (Butcher and Jeffrey, 2007), doctoral students rarely experience dilemmas and tensions having to satisfy both academic and industry requirements (Thune, 2010). While our study affirms that doctoral students undertake multiple roles in university-industry research projects, our analysis of their experiences underscores the need for these students to navigate significant uncertainty in collaborative research.

Considering the commercial priorities of their partners from the industry, they can generate knowledge essential for the competitiveness of the company and prove to be an important and powerful source of innovation (Kunttu et al., 2018; Laursen and Salter, 2004; Perkmann et al., 2013). Furthermore, PhD students could reduce uncertainties in innovative activities through actively encouraging knowledge transfer between industry and academia (Kitagawa, 2014; Locatelli et al., 2021).

Processes of doctoral training often carry an inherent ambiguity due to the unpredictable nature of research. Lack of clarity around the structure and design of doctoral research, expectations from the doctoral students, and what the academic life entails overall are common elements of the doctoral training (Cornwall et al., 2019; McAlpine and Amundsen, 2009). We contend that involvement in university-industry research projects introduces additional dimension of uncertainty into the doctoral training process. Doctoral students are expected to navigate between academic and industry demands and need to respond to unanticipated situations caused by the shifting strategic focus of their industry partners. This leads to substantial alterations in collaborative projects, with the individuals most impacted by these changes typically being the PhD students (Plantec et al., 2023). This is because they are the ones directly engaged in conducting experiments and producing scientific results, aiming to advance both industry and academic knowledge.

Early recognition of these uncertainties and the challenges they bring to the doctoral training, provides an opportunity for adopting specific actions to maintain the effectiveness of collaboration and independence of the researchers. Through dynamically aligning expectations about access, research focus and expected outcomes, PhD students can reduce the uncertainty regarding the industry focus and interests and further reflect on these issues in their own research planning.

Secondly, the PhD students have shared that visiting the industry site has helped them address the uncertainty of having imperfect information about industry, product and/or processing details. In line with prior research on collaborative research projects (Locatelli et al., 2021), doctoral students emphasized the importance of visiting the company’s site as it provided an opportunity for both getting access to advanced instruments and laboratory equipment, and expanding their professional network. Although a research visit to the industry site is a common practice for many doctoral students in collaborative research, there are cases where senior project partners need to interfere in order to facilitate a visit and negotiate access to company’s facilities.

Lastly, doctoral students shared that as the collaborative projects progress, they ascertain to acknowledge the limitation imposed by their partners. They learn to anticipate changes which may appear in the overall project and affect their individual PhD research (Elliot, 2022). At the more advanced stages of collaborative research, PhD students are better equipped to take independent decisions about taking control of their own projects - practice which often requires the support of their supervisors and research institutions.

Our article highlights the important role of doctoral students as knowledge producers and boundary spanners in the university-industry collaborations and it reveals particular tensions arising from collaborative research conducted with industry. PhD students in collaborative projects have been described as knowledge creators, boundary spanners, possessing a distinct ability to bridge the gap between industry and academia. Nonetheless, they might initially face challenges in establishing legitimacy within these roles at the onset of their doctoral journey. We argue that collaborative research can intensify the uncertainty experienced by doctoral students, adding additional dimension of ambiguity and complexity to the doctoral experience.

Actively negotiating access to information, engaging in dynamic communication, conducting on-site visits are among the approaches employed by the PhD students when navigating the uncertainty of the doctoral process. Hence, it might prove advantageous for academic and industry PhD supervisors to consider the possibility of including PhD students in high-level meetings and dynamic dialogues that foster knowledge-sharing. Furthermore, it would be advisable for PhD supervisors and industry partners to collaborate on enhancing boundary-spanning practices like industry visits. These efforts can play a significant role in continuous interaction and knowledge integration.

Lastly, PhD students may not be aware of all aspects of academic freedom and therefore be uncertain about how much industry partners can influence the design and execution of their research. PhD schools should consider developing doctoral training with dedicated focus on research integrity and academic freedom and providing tools to doctoral students for addressing inherent challenges of contemporary scientific conduct. Research institutions and collaboration partners from the industry can empower PhD students to actively participate and design collaborative research, alleviating concerns about potential loss of knowledge intended to stay within the firm’s or university’s boundaries.

Footnotes

ORCID iDs

Gergana Romanova

Marcel L.A.M. Bogers

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was supported by Novo Nordisk Fonden, Grant No. NNF16OC0021630.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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