Inside Macquarie’s external engagement strategy: Research, innovation, and enterprise in practice

In this episode, we explore what it takes to make external engagement more strategic, coordinated and impactful with Professor Dan Johnson, Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research, Innovation, and Enterprise at Macquarie University.

We unpack how Macquarie’s history, location within the Macquarie Park Innovation District and strong industry-facing culture have shaped its approach to partnerships. From building “sticky” relationships with multiple connection points to aligning research, innovation, commercialisation, entrepreneurship and enterprise under one portfolio, the conversation examines how universities can move beyond fragmented engagement activity toward a more joined-up, partner-friendly model.

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Summary

At Macquarie University, external engagement is not treated as a separate function sitting at the edge of institutional life. For Professor Dan Johnson, Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research, Innovation, and Enterprise at Macquarie University, it is part of the university’s founding logic: connecting research, innovation, entrepreneurship, commercialisation, and partnerships in ways that make the institution easier to work with and more effective in delivering impact.

That question matters now as universities are under growing pressure to demonstrate relevance beyond their campuses. Partners want universities to be more coordinated, more responsive, and less fragmented. At the same time, universities must preserve the academic independence and organic relationships that make research collaboration valuable in the first place. Macquarie’s approach offers a practical view of how an institution can professionalise external engagement without trying to control it.

Born inside an innovation district

Macquarie University’s engagement strategy is shaped by its geography as much as by its governance. Founded in the 1960s next to what became the Macquarie Park Innovation District, the university has grown alongside a dense ecosystem of companies, researchers, and knowledge workers. That proximity has created a culture where industry and community connection are not new ambitions, but longstanding features of the institution.

The district itself gives Macquarie an unusually strong platform for partnership. It spans 6.8 square kilometres, includes more than 300 companies, and represents significant economic and research activity. The university also owns its own land, enabling long-term relationships with organisations that can be physically co-located on campus.

That history matters because engagement strategies cannot simply be imported from elsewhere. For Dan, Macquarie’s model had to reflect the university’s own setting: its innovation district, its land ownership, its hospital, and its collaborative internal culture.

From activity to alignment

Universities rarely suffer from a lack of engagement activity. The challenge is often that activity appears disconnected to the outside world. One partner might hear from a university about philanthropy, student internships, research collaboration and commercialisation through separate channels, with little visible coordination between them.

Macquarie’s strategy responds directly to that problem. The aim is not to reduce the number of relationships or centralise every interaction. It is to create a stronger institutional framework around the many relationships that already exist.

The strategic intent of the Macquarie University engagement strategy is to professionalise and coordinate our engagement efforts. […] The overall objective is that the experience of a third party is that the university is joined up, aligned and easy to work with. 

For Dan, the desired partner experience is simple: the university should feel aligned, aware and easy to navigate. That requires internal knowledge-sharing, consistent leadership support and structures that help people see where their work connects to a broader institutional relationship.

Building sticky partnerships

Macquarie’s Research, Innovation and Enterprise portfolio brings together capabilities that often sit apart in universities. These include external partnerships, business development, intellectual property management, commercialisation, entrepreneurship training, startup creation, incubation, and early-stage investment.

The logic behind this structure is to help build what Dan calls “sticky” partnerships: relationships that endure beyond a single project, individual academic or contact point. Instead of relying on one connection between one researcher and one partner, the university seeks to create multiple points of engagement across research, education, faculties, infrastructure, and leadership levels.

This does not mean replacing faculty-level relationships with a centralised office. Macquarie uses a hub-and-spoke model, where professional staff have a central reporting line but are also embedded in faculty processes, committees and working environments. The aim is to combine coordination with proximity.

You can’t really have either, you have to have both in order to be for success

Working with ambiguity, not against

External engagement is inherently messy. In universities, ideas, leads and relationships emerge from many places at once. Academics work with a high degree of autonomy, and many external relationships begin through personal trust, disciplinary networks, or informal conversations.

Dan argues that successful engagement leadership requires a high tolerance for that ambiguity. The work is not about controlling every interaction, but is about helping promising relationships develop into meaningful, sustainable partnerships.

Ultimately, you have to have a very high tolerance for ambiguity in this area because the ideas and the leads and the relationships are going to happen organically all over the place.

That perspective is especially important when introducing systems such as CRM platforms. Macquarie is working on Partner 360, an initiative intended to integrate previously separate CRM systems into a single Salesforce environment. The goal is to give leaders and professional staff a better view of partner relationships across the university, while recognising that not every interaction can or should be captured in the same way.

Measuring what matters

For Dan, success cannot be reduced to activity counts alone. Research income, spinouts, partnerships and philanthropic outcomes may all matter, but turning every measure into a target can distort behaviour. The risk is that teams start chasing the metric rather than building the relationship or solving the problem.

Macquarie does track important indicators, including research income, but Dan places stronger emphasis on impact: whether partnerships are helping solve real problems, create jobs, influence policy, support communities, or generate meaningful benefits beyond the university.

This also shapes how credit is understood internally. External engagement often succeeds through the work of many people across faculties, portfolios and partner organisations. Dan’s view is that institutional success matters more than individual ownership.

That stance connects external engagement to a larger question facing universities worldwide: social licence. If universities want to maintain public trust, they need to show how their knowledge, people and partnerships contribute to society.

Macquarie University’s approach shows that external engagement is not just a matter of structure, systems or strategy documents. It depends on culture, leadership patience and a willingness to work from the university’s distinctive context. The core insight is clear: universities become stronger partners when they align internally while preserving the organic relationships that make collaboration possible.

Ready for more?

If Dan Johnson’s insights on what it takes to make external engagement more strategic resonated with you, you might also enjoy our podcast episode, Inside Oregon State’s partnership model for industry and community engagement, with Rebecca Robinson, Associate Vice President for Economic Development and Industry Relations at Oregon State University. This episode explores how Oregon State has built a more coordinated, sector-based approach to engaging with industry and community partners.

Stay tuned for the next episode on this series and don’t forget to follow us on your preferred podcast platform!