Industry
The Challenge:
Companies are under growing pressure to innovate responsibly, yet many struggle to align business goals with societal expectations, stakeholder trust, and long-term system needs
What’s Possible?
Cross-sector partnerships help companies move beyond transactional partnerships and CSR and toward trusted, long-term value creation.
What this looks like in action
By collaborating with academia, industry gains access to cutting-edge research, while non-profits offer ground-level insight. For example, a tech firm partners with local non-profits and researchers to expand digital access.
Working with government aligns innovation with policy and de-risks implementation. For example, agribusiness co-invests in climate-resilient supply chains with farmers, academia, and government.
Example Partnership Models
1. Partnerships for Social Innovation
Social innovation ecosystems bring together community actors, institutions, social entrepreneurs, and policymakers to co-create solutions that address structural inequities. These ecosystems aim not just to innovate at the margins, but to rewire the relationships and power dynamics that shape public systems.
Sectors involved:
Community-Based Organizations Non-Profit
Government administrators and Policymakers
Industry / Private sector
Philanthropy
Regions: Africa, South Asia, US
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Through initiatives like the Fifth Estate, we designed multi-stakeholder models that bridged social innovation models with institutional decision-making processes.
The approach included convening intergenerational coalitions, facilitating structured dialogue between community-based organizations and government bodies, and embedding youth-driven policy recommendations into formal systems.
These partnerships enabled social entrepreneurs and grassroots leaders to influence governance structures—leading to programmatic uptake by public institutions and philanthropic actors, and shifts in national policy frameworks.
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At Purdue’s Shah Global Innovation Lab, we contributed to the design of innovation ecosystems that positioned community needs and social impact as central drivers of technology development, and customization.
Rather than relying solely on traditional tech transfer pipelines, the lab cultivated partnerships among researchers, social entrepreneurs, non-profit organizations and end users to co-design solutions with dual-market strategies.
These ecosystems enabled technologies in water, energy, agriculture and health to be developed with affordability, accessibility, and adoptability in mind—shifting how innovation is conceptualized, financed, and distributed for impact.
3. Partnerships for Tech Transfer & Innovation Commercialization
Tech transfer partnerships bridge academic research and real-world application by enabling technologies developed in university settings to reach markets and communities. Effective models align research incentives with commercial pathways and development needs, while building institutional capacity to manage innovation pipelines.
Sectors involved:
Community-Based Organizations Non-Profit
Government administrators and Policymakers
Industry / Private sector
Philanthropy
Regions: Africa, South Asia, US
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At Purdue University, we contributed to the design of interdisciplinary tech transfer frameworks that connected engineering research with global development outcomes.
Working within the Shah Global Innovation Lab in the College of Engineering, we supported models that engaged faculty, commercialization experts, and development actors in co-assessing technologies for market viability—considering both low-resource community needs and private sector scaling potential.
This approach informed licensing, open-access dissemination, and entrepreneurial spinouts for technologies targeting clean water, sustainable energy, health, education, and agricultural innovation.
5. Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships for Systems Change
Systems change initiatives aim to shift the underlying structures, relationships, and mental models that shape complex challenges. Systems change reconfigures how institutions, communities, and policies interact over time. It’s about enabling lasting transformation, not just generating new ideas.
Sectors involved:
Community-Based Organizations/ Non-Profit
Government administrators and Policymakers
Industry / Private sector
Regions: Central and East Asia, South Asia, US
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The Asia Resilient Cities (ARC) initiative, funded by USAID, supported secondary cities across Bangladesh, India, Mongolia, and Kyrgyz Republic in building urban resilience through systems-based approaches.
The model combined participatory diagnostics, city-led strategy development, and governance strengthening to address interlinked challenges in health, climate adaptation, and economic inclusion.
Cross-sector learning agendas, municipal policy integration, and coordination platforms were central to enabling adaptive management and sustaining impact. Rather than implementing one-off interventions, ARC helped embed resilience thinking into local institutions—transforming how cities plan, prioritize, and collaborate for long-term change.
6. Locally Led Community Partnerships
Locally led partnerships are most effective when designed to overcome “collaborative inertia”—the common stall point where intent doesn’t translate into action. Strong models invest in civic infrastructure, shared accountability, and flexible structures that support sustained engagement.
Sectors involved:
Community-Based Organizations Non-Profit
Government administrators and Policymakers
Philanthropy
Regions: Africa, South Asia, US
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Based on field research in Indiana communities, this model highlights what helps local partnerships move from planning to impact.
Through the Hometown Collaboration Initiative, nonprofits, public agencies, and residents co-developed strategies to address housing, health, and equity.
Success hinged on clear roles, adaptive structures, and communication routines—paired with leadership development and participatory planning processes.
The model offers funders and nonprofit leaders a roadmap for building partnerships that are inclusive, actionable, and built to last.
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The ARC initiative, funded by USAID, worked with secondary cities across Asia to co-design locally led resilience strategies.
Each city developed its own plan based on participatory diagnostics and community priorities—supported, not driven, by technical partners.
The model emphasized municipal ownership, cross-sector coordination with local groups, and interdepartmental co-ordination for decision-making and accountability.
By aligning resources, planning, and governance around local leadership, ARC demonstrated how systems-level outcomes can be achieved through locally driven processes.
7. Purposeful Stakeholder Engagement
Effective partnerships begin with the right questions—and the right conversations. Purposeful engagements create structured spaces for stakeholders to surface root causes, align on priorities, and design actionable strategies. When grounded in systems thinking, these engagements go beyond consultation to build collective insight and lasting momentum.
Sectors involved:
Academia
Community-Based Organizations / Non-Profit
Government administrators and Policymakers
Industry / Private Sector
Philanthropy
Regions: Africa, Central and East Asia, South Asia, South America, US
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As part of USAID funded Asia Resilient Cities (ARC’s) early implementation, city-level diagnostics brought together local government, civil society, and community members to co-define climate resilience priorities.
These sessions enabled city stakeholders to surface cross-cutting issues—such as climate risk and informal economic exclusion—and structure work plans around local context and institutional capacity.
These diagnostics informed the co-creation of city resilience strategies, helping to align funding, governance reforms, and policy shifts around locally defined priorities.
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A multi-city forum series was designed to address epidemic preparedness by connecting local needs with national decision-making.
The process combined stakeholder interviews, needs assessments, and facilitated dialogues across four regions, culminating in a national synthesis convening.
The model emphasized stakeholder-driven framing, cross-sector collaboration, and the translation of community insights into actionable public health communication strategies.
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This engagement applied a structured systems method—Comprehensive Success Factor Analysis (CSFA)—to help USAID, academic, NGO and local government partners in Colombia identify root challenges across youth development, rural livelihoods, and migration.
This method combined pre-conference surveys, expert scoping groups, and in-workshop mapping to generate “issue trees” and narrow sector challenges to actionable research focus areas.
By combining researcher-practitioner engagement with systems gap analysis, the model enabled USAID and its partners to align future research funding with high-impact, field-defined needs.
