Inside innovation: the university-business interface
1st February 2009
Some observations...
1. The Importance of Basic Research
Universities exist to generate and disseminate new ideas. These objectives are achieved primarily through teaching students and publishing research. Sometimes there is also an opportunity to transfer technology out to business as a way of promoting the take up of new ideas for public benefit and generating returns for the university to invest back into teaching and research.
Universities (and some research institutes and government labs) are the only source of independent, early-stage, basic research. There are numerous sources of later-stage research and development activities in commercial enterprises.
Technology transfer actively supports basic research by aiding its future applications and generating returns for further research. Any activity, which adversely affects the ability of universities to conduct basic research is a bad thing.
2. Supply & Demand
The 2003 Lambert Review of Business University Collaboration emphasised that “The biggest challenge identified in this Review lies on the demand side” and that “there has been a marked culture change in the UK’s universities over the past decade”.
The activities of universities as ‘suppliers’ of technology have received intense scrutiny in recent years, the subject of numerous reviews, reports and commentaries.
There are two areas on the demand side that are worthy of attention.
The first is the capacity of industry to absorb and capitalise on the wealth of potential opportunities from the research base. It is certainly true that UK industry is incapable of advancing all of the opportunities and it is probably true globally as well.
The second is the behaviour, culture and attitudes of UK industry to innovation. Despite the established Open Innovation phenomenon and the long term efforts of the DTI, and now BERR and TSB, there remains few UK companies actively engaged in seeking innovation technology and business opportunities from the research base.
When considering the respective roles of universities as generators of ideas and businesses as exploiters of ideas it is unreasonable to blame the lack of exploitation on the universities.
You don’t make money out of technology, you make money out of a business that successfully commercialises technology. Technology is a cost for the university; technology transfer provides opportunities to business to invest in these technologies and make money. UK industry is not very successful at this compared to US counterparts. Instead of comparing leading UK universities with US universities, compare UK business to the business activities of global hotspots like in Boston and Califiornia.
3. Impact
There has been increased interest in the impact of publicly funded research since the publication in July 2006 of a report on “Increasing the economic impact of the Research Councils”, known as the Warry Report. The Report was largely critical and the Research Councils have been forced to respond defensively.
Now that Research Councils have demonstrated the positive impact that the research they fund has on the UK and the world in economic, social and policy terms it is not clear what may happen next. However, it appears that for the time being government remains focussed on the Impact agenda.
Universities are also in the frame as recipients of substantial sums of public funds from the Research Councils. Universities are now promoting the impact of their research activities as the debate spreads. Oxford University, for example, is publishing a research brochure with the title ‘Innovation and Impact’.
There are three areas of concern worth highlighting.
1. Language
Government is insisting on proving the ‘Economic Impact’ of the research. In response to the point that the impact goes beyond the economy, government explains that when it uses the word Economic it includes social and policy impact.
The impact on the economy, society and public policy from research is enormous, wide-ranging and immensely impressive, over a sustained long time period. As the jargon develops, it is preferable to talk about Impact without the Economic, Social and Policy explanation.
2. Objectives
In general, it is reasonable to expect a certain impact if this was a stated objective at the outset of the activity. This begs the question whether or not economic impact is a stated objective of university research; if so how is this measured, and is there a danger someone wants the system reorganised to deliver against this objective. These are enormous questions and investigating them runs the severe risk of irretrievably damaging the university research system we currently have.
3. Timescales
The impact of research is often unexpected and only realised many, many years into the future. If research funding decisions are to be assessed against economic impact, this will by definition lead to short-termism as the impact of the research with long term impact will be invisible and impossible to assess.
There are two conclusions to be drawn.
Talk of Impact may be worthwhile; talk of Economic Impact is misguided and dangerous.
If economic impact becomes an objective of university research two bad things will happen: (i) a unique resource will be lost (the existing university research base) and (ii) overall impact will decline as short term criteria are used to assess research proposals.
Inside Innovation. Tom Hockaday – MD Oxford University Innovation
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