We know that industry is committed to our research! Illustrating from cases of industry-based research, I will discuss various ways by which academics and practitioners can work together to provide mutual benefits. As we move into our fourth round of Research Centre funding in 2021, we have has achieved mutualistic relationships with many companies. Now, industry have to contribute 50% of individual project funding. In the early years, having an industry-based project was sufficient. Within Lero, I have been working closely with industry for almost 20 years - a requirement of the funding agency, Science Foundation Ireland. In this talk, I will question the practitioner-academic divide that is so often spoken about, making the argument that it can be sorted by taking small steps rather than giant leaps. We have academics who are also practitioners, and practitioners who conduct research within their own organisations. Students become practitioners, practitioners become students, academics move to industry, and practitioners come back to universities for further study. Even where organisms are different, there can be mutual benefits! Are academics and practitioners really so different that we cannot build mutualistic relationships? Or are we even the same species, where one group morphs into the other, in a bi-directional way. One such relationship is that of the zebra and oxpecker – the oxpecker gets food by eating ticks and parasites that live on the zebra’s skin, thus providing the zebra with pest control. In nature we find examples of mutualistic relationships that have evolved together, where each symbiont makes use of each other in mutually beneficial way.

Oxpecker and zebra cartoon