In 2007 the Processes and IT area in CEMEX launched an Open Innovation Strategy to collaborate with external experts such as universities, consultants and associations at a global level in key strategic topics. As a result, a portfolio of more than 50 collaborative research projects has been launched in particular with different academic organizations mainly in Europe and Mexico. Different lessons learned have been obtained, but one of the most relevant ones, has been the acknowledgement of different ways to manage collaborative research projects according to the business opportunities and the need to identify a process and roles to enable successful collaborations. Such collaborative spaces enable the sharing and co-creation of knowledge and the emergence of knowledge markets where intellectual capital is co-developed. This paper proposes a process to enable firms collaborate with Universities to deploy an open innovation model and the actors enabling it.