The Academia-banking industry collaborations involve transforming the results of financial research into a banking application of that knowledge, to provide goods and services for the society.

The Bayh-Dole Act, enacted in 1980, details the rules and regulations for collaborations between private industry and research institutions, such as universities and since then, financial relationships between them have grown, especially in the United States. The researchers at the university institutes and other research bodies perform research and generate new knowledge or intellectual property for the industry. In return, they receive research support, honoraria, consulting fees, equity, and/or other payments. In Europe there’s often a third agent, and that’s the public sector, either on a pan-European or national level. The University and Industry benefit from each other’s infrastructure and resources that comes from an enormous investment of both public and private funds.

The academia-industry relationship gives an impression of being honestly motivated, highly productive, mutually beneficial and supportive of the best interests of patient care. Hence, the extent and nature of industry-academia collaborations have been increasing in size and complexity over the years. As scientific questions become more complex, securing government funds to carry out the large-scale collaborative and interdisciplinary research needed to answer them is difficult. In this context the need of new collaboration structures becomes obvious. But do we use the available resources to build such collaboration structures? In an era when the e-communities, also referred to as “social networks”, become more and more popular, some people thought that they could have new uses apart from just socializing.

That is how the “European Banking Society” project began. The European Banking Society (http://www.bankingsociety.eu) aims to be an independent community that will bring together bankers, bank employees and banking researches. On their website, somebody can organize, manage and publish his/her personal information right from his/her own private and secure space on the web and raise his/her profile within EBS network by creating a public profile-page accessible to other members via the search feature. Scholars can also publish their work heightening the visibility of their research. There’s even a public discussions forum called "Vienna Bank Cafe" where members can also express your thoughts and opinions. The European Banking Society website is safe, free and independent. This is a good idea and we expect to see its success.