Academic/commercial collaboration

I recently attended an academic conference on computer-human
interaction. I was struck by the fact that such a high proportion of the
papers seemed so, well, academic. In order to achieve scientific rigor,
it was often felt necessary to reduce the number of variables to a
manageable set, that meant that the research had little relevance to
real-world issues. The matters addressed didn't always seem very
relevant. There's also the problem that so much academic research only
uses students as subjects, who don't necessarily behave like our
customers (unless you're running a student site).

On the other hand, there are a lot of bright people in academia, and
they are looking for things to research. They have time and some
resources. It seems a shame to me that industry can't somehow find a way
to collaborate, so that the academics still get to publish their papers
and do good research, but the results are also more directly applicable
to real issues.

I've been in discussion with people in the U.S. on this, and it's been
suggested that a list to bring the two communities together would be
worth trying. I'd be interested to know what people here think of the
issue in general, and whether there's any interest in such a list.

*    Nick Gassman - eCommerce Manager - [email protected]     *
              * http://www.britishairways.com *

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