The collaboration between industry and academia has been an issue in fluidization technology since its beginning. Examples of excellent and fruitful collaboration are found in the history of the past 60 years, which furthered the development of new processes. However, such a cooperation is not as common as it perhaps should be. In the first part of the paper, the role of industry/academia collaboration in the historical development of fluidization technology and science is discussed. In the second part, a survey is given on the different ways and levels of collaboration based on the author's experience in the field of fluidization in Germany. The possibilities cover a wide range, from consulting over the exchange of experiences and the collection of information in the framework of professional organizations to bilateral cooperation via service work and research contracts. Of increasing importance is the collaboration in the framework of public-funded research projects on the national or international (EU) level. The different possibilities are illustrated by examples. In the final part of the paper, some areas of future collaboration between academia and industry are identified, e.g. the evaluation and validation of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models by measurements in industrial fluidized beds, the investigation of 3D effects in large-scale fluidized beds and the development of measurement techniques for better process control.