Plan

1. First and foremost, recognize that your interaction with the university is not a transaction. It is a partnership: a deep engagement that can often last many years with several touchpoints. A strong partnership leverages respective strengths and requires investments from each entity to achieve more than the sum of its parts. A successful partnership can support your productivity and growth by providing new knowledge, top talent, and brand power, all while driving the university’s research and educational impacts to benefit the society at large.

2. Think big. There are many ways to engage with the university depending on your unique priorities that strengthen your competitive advantage. Be open to new opportunities and facilitate connections with other business units to leverage the university’s broad strengths for your whole organization’s benefit.

Get organized

3. Ensure that your senior leadership team values the relationship. Strong partnerships require strategic alignment and mobilization of resources to achieve planned outcomes that can be successfully translated into organizational benefits. Both key elements require strong support from senior leadership.

4. Designate the right primary contact person for your organization to interact with the university’s primary contact person. A good primary contact is one who interacts with different units and recognizes their role as the conduit to a whole complex organization. This will ensure that communication lines stay open and that someone from each side has the full picture of the interaction so you can leverage appropriate opportunities.

5. Establish an internal team that is responsible for disseminating university updates so that you can fully identify and engage with all the opportunities that are of interest to various units within your organization. 

6. Set realistic expectations for timelines and deliverables. Students work with the academic calendar and fundamental research projects don’t always go as planned. Communicate openly about your priorities and limitations and we will do the same.

Engage

7. Explore. Peruse our website, come to campus, attend talks and events, meet staff and students, host recruiting events, and immerse yourself in our ecosystem. You will find that it is an inspiring place to be and could open your mind to new possibilities for the partnership. 

8. Engage with the Blue Door team to translate your partnership ideas into a partnership plan of action. We will curate a set of opportunities that meet your needs and help you navigate the university’s vast ecosystem to find the right person, program, or process. 

9. Understand U of T’s context as a not-for-profit educational institution and adhere to our policies. 

Execute

10. Once you’ve planned, prepared, and engaged with us, organize your team to implement a collaboration strategy with us. Free up capacity with your legal team to review agreements, identify the staff who will be engaged on the various projects, and determine how the project results will be translated to meet your business objectives and deliver ROI.