Last week's poll: collaborative research

We had a relatively modest response to our poll last week, with only 182 readers replying. Within this sample, there was a wide variation of responses with no clear winner; this is obviously a complex matter and perhaps respondents were replying based on their own varied experiences. The largest group of respondents, 25 per cent, thought that defining the boundaries of the collaboration was the most difficult factor. The next largest, 20 per cent, thought that resolving IP issues was the biggest barrier to collaboration (although it's notable that one commentor said that IP was almost always a red herring). Close behind was the next option, on 19 per cent, stating the communication barriers formed the biggest difficulty, which matched what staff on The Engineer have found when discussing collaboration in large projects. The next group, comprising 17 per cent of respondents, thought that building the project team to balance expertise was the most difficult factor. The financial aspect of collaboration – spreading the funding between the partners – was the choice of 10 per cent. Finally, 9 per cent of respondents declined to pick an option.