Capitalizing of knowledge is a challenge for Dutch private sector and research institutes. In the Netherlands knowledge institutes and private sector are involved in innovative projects where knowledge is brought to business value, including applying knowledge to solve existing problems and creating new knowledge through research.

The Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs has developed a seed money fund to stimulate the scoping and development of new partnerships between the private sector and research institutes. Setting up such Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) in an international context is a complex task. There are many stakeholders involved who need to align their interests in order to develop a successful partnership.

WUR-LEI and WUR-Food & Biobased Research have looked into various international cases in which business value creation with research knowledge resources takes place. The main research question they have explored is: What were critical success factors for the formation and continuation of international PPPs, in which knowledge generation and capitalization play a role? Related questions are: Is seed money effective for building new partnerships? How has seed funding been used by previous PPPs, and what can we learn from them? What models are applied to achieve successful consortia and in addition generate spin off to really capitalize on the knowledge of the Dutch agro-food sector?

Expert meeting

The Ministry of Economic Affairs and the F&BKP are organizing an expert meeting (at invitation only) to discuss the lessons learnt with people who have experience in architecting models for knowledge capitalization, ranging from research project leaders, to government officials responsible for knowledge creation, and the private sector. Our goal is to bring together the research results and the experience of the participants in a brochure describing the various pathways to knowledge capitalization.