When your research institution seeks companies to partner with you most likely ask questions like:

  • Which technologies companies are investing in?
  • Which firms should you approach?
  • Which sectors align with your institutional strengths?

In other words, you focus on the businesses you consider partnering with.

But there’s another perspective that most institutions don’t consider when planning partnerships: peer institutions.

Monitoring peer institutions can reveal where collaboration is intensifying, which fields are becoming saturated, and where untapped opportunities lie.”

This dual view – industry + peers – is becoming a defining capability for research leaders who need to build strategies that hold up under scrutiny.

For example, engagement staff may collect informal intelligence about which companies are active in their field, while strategy teams review annual peer reports or rankings to understand institutional position. Both are useful, but on their own, neither provides the continuous, joined-up view needed for true competitive visibility.

In this article, we explore why competitive visibility increasingly requires understanding both industry behaviour and peer activity – and how a dual-view approach helps leaders make decisions that are both defensible and strategically aligned. We’ll also touch on how tools like Dimensions Industry Partnerships support this shift.

Why you can’t separate peer activity from ROI

When boards ask about ROI, they don’t solely mean it in a narrow financial sense. ROI includes reputation, long-term visibility, competitiveness, talent pipelines, and the institution’s ability to attract major partners.

How do peer institutions influence this?

If your competitors are strengthening in a field you want to lead, the ROI outcome changes. That’s because when competition increases, securing funding becomes harder, and your institution risks being perceived as a follower rather than a leader. 

On the other hand, a field where your competitors are inactive but where your researchers are gaining momentum may represent an opportunity. 

Using data on the research projects your institution has done in the past tells what has worked. But it doesn’t help you understand what will work in the future. The only way to evaluate that effectively is to look beyond internal data.

Dimensions Industry Partnerships (DIP) makes this possible by combining global research intelligence with institutional signals, giving leaders a dual, real-time view of both external demand and competitive pressure. This allows decisions to be grounded in evidence rather than assumptions.

If you want to understand how to improve industrial partnership ROI narratives, our companion piece – Why Clearer Industry Insight Is Becoming a Strategic Advantage – expands on this leadership perspective.

Institutions need peer data to complement industry insights

Industry activity tells you where the market is moving. Peer activity tells you where universities are responding. Together, they reveal:

  • Opportunities that make sense financially and reputationally
  • Areas with high demand but low competition
  • Fields where peers are gaining ground faster than expected
  • Companies aligning with research areas you can realistically lead
  • Strategic risks that internal teams may miss

This combined visibility also removes the guesswork that can delay institutional strategy – reducing the unreliability that comes from scattered evidence, and eliminating the delays caused by manually assembling fragmented data from multiple systems. 

When leaders see movement among peers and industry simultaneously – whether it’s increasing attention in an emerging field or a sudden rise in corporate citations linked to a specific department – they can act with clarity and confidence.

It becomes far easier to prioritise investment, shape messaging for government or funding conversations, and build a future-facing narrative that aligns both academic ambition and market opportunity.

Dimensions Industry Partnerships as the solution

This is where DIP differs from more traditional tools. Powered by the broader Dimensions dataset, it links grants, publications, patents, corporate citations and collaboration patterns to reveal how institutional strengths align with peer activity and industry demand. The result is a defensible decision-making environment where leaders can see emerging opportunities early, validate strategy and track progress with confidence.

Turning insight into action

If you are exploring how to make AI-driven research intelligence both faster and more reliable, now is the time to look beyond standalone tools. Discover how a connected, structured approach can support better decisions across your institution.