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This article outlines a process, whereby public research efforts can be joined with private sector product needs creating a commercialization culture that can help provide opportunities and address the barriers of new product concepts for the marketplace. The issues discussed here were identified through research efforts that explored the opportunity to align academic research with private sector commercialization efforts. The purpose is to identify academic and private sector linkages that may benefit and enhance new product research efforts with the goal of moving faculty‐driven product research from inception to marketplace commercialization. The end result is a process by which public sector (institutions of higher education) and private sector organizations can interact to develop new products for the commercial marketplace that will meet the burgeoning product needs of current and future customers.

The current study demonstrates the value of utilizing qualitative research methods to analyze logistics problems. Specifically, the study utilizes a qualitative methodology to examine the feasibility of designing a reverse logistics system to recycle and/or refurbish end‐of‐life computers that are deemed no longer useful by their owners. The qualitative methodology is a modified version of a customer visit program in which the in‐depth interviews were used to identify the special needs of stakeholders who could potentially participate in the proposed system. The qualitative interviews were structured and implemented using a standardized approach set forth in the literature. The results indicate that this qualitative technique proved valuable in obtaining industry‐sensitive stakeholder data, which allowed the researchers to more thoroughly analyze the feasibility of the proposed reverse logistics system.