Cross-Department Products at BINUS — One Innovation, Three Study Program Scores

The most underread sentence in the BINUS Product Commercialized PI documentation is this one: a single Score awarded to a product can be applied to a maximum of three departments. In practice, this means a well-built cross-departmental product can simultaneously fulfil the annual product PI target for three separate study programs — all from one submission, one review process, and one final score. The example given in BINUS RTT’s own framework involves inventors from DKV, Industrial Engineering, and Computer Engineering receiving a Score 5 that is credited to all three departments. Run that logic across a planned three-year research cycle, and the KPI efficiency gain for participating departments is significant.

The strategic case, however, goes beyond score allocation. Cross-disciplinary product teams consistently perform better in the rubric because they address all eight assessment parameters more completely than single-discipline teams. A product developed entirely within one engineering department often performs well on TKT and Technical Documentation but struggles on Competitive Advantage and Market Readiness — the parameters where design thinking, user behaviour research, and market analysis expertise make the most difference. These three parameters together account for 37.5% of the total score. No single-discipline team, however technically strong, can optimise for all of them simultaneously.

The argument is structural, not anecdotal. ITB DKST’s 2024 Programme Penguatan Inovasi made cross-faculty collaboration a formal eligibility condition — teams were required to include members from at least two different research groups, specifically because single-discipline proposals were consistently rated as “technically sound but commercially underspecified.” The rationale maps directly onto the BINUS rubric’s own weighting: market-facing parameters (Competitive Advantage, Market Readiness, Industry/Investor Interest) collectively outweigh the combined weight of TKT and Technical Documentation (ITB DKST, 2024 — Call for Proposal Program Penguatan Inovasi, dkst.itb.ac.id).

For BINUS lecturers thinking about this as a planning exercise rather than a submission-month scramble, the architecture of a strong cross-department product team should map to the rubric’s parameter logic. The research-and-technology contributor — typically from a computing, engineering, or science programme — owns the TKT claim, the technical specification, and the proof-of-concept evidence. The design or communication contributor strengthens the competitive positioning section and the product’s visual and experiential specification, both of which directly support the Competitive Advantage parameter. The business or management contributor builds the market analysis, defines the target beneficiary with specificity, and develops the economic potential argument. Together, these three contributors address seven of the eight rubric parameters at a level no single-discipline team can reliably reach.

The co-authorship and IP documentation are where most cross-department collaborations run into difficulty — not conceptually, but administratively. When three researchers from three departments co-develop a product, the HKI registration must name all inventors accurately, and each department must be formally registered as a beneficiary of the Score in the BRIDGE Apps submission. This coordination must happen before the December cut-off, not on the submission date. RTT recommends initiating multi-inventor product coordination at least three months before December to allow adequate time for the HKI filing, joint evidence compilation, and reviewer scheduling across multiple submitters.

The external funding dimension makes this logic more compelling still. Kedaireka — the Kemdiktisaintek-backed matching fund platform that distributed over Rp1 trillion across university-industry collaboration schemes — includes a Skema A3 specifically for collaborative product innovation with industry partners (DUDI), explicitly requiring multi-faculty or multi-institution teams. Lecturers who build cross-department product partnerships for the BINUS PI process are simultaneously constructing the team architectures that qualify for Kedaireka in subsequent cycles. The same interdisciplinary team that earns three departments a Score 4 this December is the grant-eligible team for a Kedaireka application next year.

The fastest way to identify which BINUS departments have complementary research capabilities for a specific product domain is through RTT’s Industrial Solution Matching service — designed precisely to map existing researcher profiles to defined product needs and identify viable cross-department or cross-faculty collaboration opportunities. A two-hour scoping conversation through this service can identify the product concept and team structure that would produce the strongest rubric submission from three departments simultaneously.

For the full eligibility rules, scoring parameters, and submission guidance, visit the Product Commercialization page at BINUS Technology Transfer.

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