Strategic Alignment between Academy and Industry: A Virtuous Cycle to Promote Innovation in Technology

Abstract

Knowledge arises from the observation of problems. In this sense, Software Engineering emerged from the necessity to solve a practical problem: the lack of knowledge on how to develop software properly. However, in the Software Engineering field the interaction between Academy and Industry is still weak. This weakness reduces the capability to promote, in the long term, technology innovation in a comprehensive and sustainable manner. In this paper, we propose a mechanism to allow the strategic alignment between Software Engineering research interests and the software industry challenges. This mechanism will be used to achieve continuous innovation in Software Engineering. Furthermore, we expect to create a virtuous cycle in which both Academy and Industry act together to approximate the state-of-art and the state-of-practice in order to maximize their results.