How Do I Get Students to Know My IT Products? Comparing the Academic Ecosystems of Two IT Giants: IBM & SAP

Collaboration between academia and the IT industry benefits both sides in various ways. Most companies seek to attract high-performing students. Yet only a limited number invest in enduring academic partnerships. There are many strategic considerations and pitfalls when building lasting relationships, especially when productive IT solutions are used in teaching and research. Although such relationships involve many stakeholders, details on their structure often remain opaque. By drawing on the development of e3 value models of IBM’s and SAP’s academic ecosystems and ethnographic case study data, we compare the two ecosystems. We discuss their main differences and give five recommendations on what practitioners of IT companies must consider when (re-)designing their academic ecosystem strategy. Based on the main challenges IBM’s and SAP’s academic ecosystems face, we identify two trends: centralized learning platforms and reaching more students via intermediaries as multipliers.