Decision rights

Decision rights are the written assignment of who makes each class of decision in a partnership, who is consulted before it, and who is informed after.

How it's used in a university-industry collaboration

Rogers and Blenko (Harvard Business Review, 2006) found that decisions routinely get stuck when nobody can say who owns them. In an R&D project the classes needing an owner are predictable: statement-of-work amendments, budget moves, schedule extensions, publication submissions, patent disclosures, investigator changes. Each gets one accountable person at kickoff, recorded in the governance charter.

Where a decision is shared, write down how. The NSF IUCRC industry advisory board (iucrc.nsf.gov) gives each member firm one representative, and the board votes on project selection. Bilateral projects usually give gate decisions to the steering committee and everything below a stated threshold to the project leads.

Where this comes from

The definition follows Rogers and Blenko, Harvard Business Review, 2006 (https://hbr.org/2006/01/who-has-the-d-how-clear-decision-roles-enhance-organizational-performance).

What Helikon does with it

Our Governance Charter template already lists these decision classes, so the kickoff meeting only has to fill in the names.