S1010 Dowling Review of Business University Collaboration: IET response

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1 S1010 Dowling Review of Business University Collaboration: IET response Executive Summary Productive, long-term research partnerships between business and academia require a mutual understanding of the interests and goals of each party, awareness of cultural differences and differing timescales and a shared desire to achieve the technical goals agreed. Academics need to better understand the need for and process of industrial collaboration and need to be helped in developing, practicing and applying these skills. Diversity among the UK s academic institutions is very wide. This should be reflected in the way in which support for collaborations is delivered, and in which success is acknowledged. More needs to be done to simplify access for SMEs and encourage them to take up opportunities for innovation support and stimulate partnerships with academic or research institutions. Key message: A long-term, consistent approach is critical to the success of successful partnerships. Initiatives to broker collaboration (such as catapult network and SBRI) are only effective if they are given the time and investment to allow universities and SMEs establish effective ways of working. Response to questions: 1. What experience do you have of establishing, participating in or supporting longterm research collaborations between business and academia? The IET is Europe's largest professional engineering and technology organisation with 160,000 members drawn from industry, academia and the public sector. The members represent a wide range of expertise, from technical experts to business leaders, encompassing a wealth of professional experience and knowledge. Our primary aims are to provide a global knowledge network promoting the exchange of ideas and enhance the positive role of science, engineering and technology between business, academia, governments and professional bodies; and to address challenges that face society in the future. This response has been compiled by the IET s Innovation and Emerging Technologies Policy Panel. Membership includes senior members from industry academia and the public sector. The panel has run a number of events bringing together senior representatives from these areas to discuss public policy issues concerning innovation. It has also provided evidence to many public consultations including the Hauser Review of Catapult Centres and the BIS Science and Innovation Strategy. 2. What are the key success factors for building productive, long-term research partnerships between business and academia and how do these vary across sectors and disciplines?

2 Productive, long-term research partnerships between business and academia requires a mutual understanding of the interests and goals of each party, awareness of cultural differences and differing timescales and a shared desire to achieve the technical goals agreed. It is inevitable that tensions will arise between the implied opposites of curiositydriven research versus immediately industry applicable and so better terms to describe the various attributes of research would be helpful. Labels such as Industrially informed or industrially inspired can help identify areas to work on. Whilst innovation is important in all sectors particular attention needs to be paid to those sectors with strong supply chains where coordination of activities between large and small business is needed to achieve success. For example, where there is significant regional and local clustering and where publicly funded infrastructure plays an important role. Initiatives where this has been successful include Motorsport Valley ( Industry/The-Industry) and the Inkjet Cluster in Cambridge (with strong industry-academic links = Government plays a key role in bringing players together to make progress especially for sectors where the market is dominated by public sector procurement, such as health. Government also need to lead and facilitate partnerships where there is a national or international strategic challenge. These partnerships play a critical role in increasing in business investment in R&D and innovation, which is important for growing productivity in the UK. Apart from some outstanding examples to the contrary (e.g. aerospace, automotive, pharmaceuticals sectors) the UK suffers from a systematic weakness in business investment in innovation. This requires a government framework which is favourable for business growth, including factors such as: a stable macro-economic, tax and regulatory framework a continuing commitment by Government to a supportive pro-innovation industrial strategy sustained investment by Government in basic and applied research and in skills investment in support for intermediary infrastructure and organisations to transfer knowledge and technology into business from academia and elsewhere stimulating business appetite to innovate in areas where this is lacking and better recognise the value of research 3. What barriers do individual businesses face in developing long-term research collaborations with academic partners and how can these be overcome? There are many examples in the UK of excellent long term collaborations between academia and large and small businesses - for example in the aerospace, automotive and pharmaceutical sectors. However, many SMEs face particular difficulties in engaging in longterm collaborations with academic and research institutions. For example: finding the right contacts in academia and engaging with bureaucracy within larger universities sustaining their commitment to long term research partnerships securing the finance needed to deliver the investment needed to bring their ideas to market avoid situation where results of UK research are predominantly exploited abroad navigating the public support arrangements for innovation

3 To overcome these problems more attention needs to be paid to maintaining the incentives within universities for academics to collaborate with business. This includes simplifying the system to provide access to publicly funded support for innovation and university expertise. A particular priority is supporting local and regional networks promoting such access. Growing the infrastructure of intermediate organisations such as Catapults to promote the transfer of technology and knowledge will play a critical role in developing long-term development collaborations. As shown by the aerospace sector, significant R&D budgets and existence of long-term technology development roadmaps also would help (e.g. aerospace roadmaps plan 20+ years into the future). Long term road-maps can also be used to justify R&D spending outside next product development cycle. 4. What barriers do academics and universities face in developing long-term research collaborations with businesses and how can these be overcome? HEFCE figures demonstrate the impact that universities have on increasing income for particular sectors. Dedicated funding streams such as the Higher Education Innovation Fund have played a big role in supporting this growth and needs to be maintained in overall public funding stream for universities. However, a shift is needed in UK priorities for EU funded research under Horizon 2020 to create more incentives for UK universities to include UK businesses in their international partnerships. This could be a potential role for Innovate UK. An open and well-informed discussion and position on intellectual property would help reduce barriers to collaboration and build trust between parties. Common problems in universities in the past include over-estimating the value of IP and a lack of willingness to licence IP or engage with SMEs. To overcome this, industry needs to be open to the idea of academic publication and have internal approval processes in place to make it as easy and transparent as possible. A trusted third party to prompt and facilitate discussions could help provide a balance between industry desire to protect intellectual property versus an academia desire to publish their research. The approach applied by Tesla to provide open access to its patents is a model which should be followed more widely if more research is to be exploited. There is also a need to increase incentives for individual academics to build and maintain links to businesses. A key issue often missed with developing collaborations is ensuring that academics themselves have the relevant skills at an appropriate level. Using an intermediary for setting up collaborations can be very helpful, but if academics regard this as a role that can be outsourced, they are unlikely to fully engage and hence may miss some of the benefit. This was a lesson learned through a programme set up by the University of Cambridge Engineering Department to support their academic staff ( A key learning point was that industrial collaboration was not something that (a) just happened at the end of a research project or (b) was just about doing short term industry problem solving. As well as maintaining emphasis on research, it is also important to reward successful partnerships with industry. Accountability for this in the REF would provide an incentive to maintain university-business collaboration on a par with producing publications in highly rated journals. This step-change needs to be driven by senior management teams in universities and so they need to be incentivised accordingly.

4 The mis-match between academic and industrial funding cycles also is a barrier to long term research collaboration. Industry generally operates on a yearly or quarterly budget for funding whereas academia operates on 2 year + research funding. Therefore, the majority of research staff are temporary and only recruited on a specific project, however, it is extremely difficult to recruit a post-doctoral research assistant (PDRA) if the post is advertised for less than 2 years duration, as most people want the security of a longer term contract. This could be overcome by academia ensuring that there is sufficient funding (i.e. other research grants) available to cover the cost of the 2 nd / 3 rd year of the contract. For industry, they should commit to a longer term obligation so that the university can be confident to underwrite the contract of the PDRA for more than one year. On the industrial side, there should be a process by which it is possible to commit the company to more than 1 year worth of funding in advance. However, this would only be feasible for enterprises who have a stable revenue stream. Academics also need to be receptive to the idea that some of the short term projects can lead excellent long-term research opportunities. EPSRC Case awards could be used to that effect by getting a doctoral student to spend some time solving the real industrial problem first whilst also defining a more generic theme for the longer term research that would lead to a thesis. 5. How effective are current incentives, policies and funding streams for promoting this type of collaboration? How could these be improved in order to scale up the range and impact of collaborations being undertaken nationally? Economic evaluations have demonstrated the positive impact of support from Innovate UK in promoting UK growth. The scale of support for this kind of transfer of results of research needs to be increased. For this to happen, the budget of Innovate UK needs to continue to grow. However, growth in support for Innovate UK should not be at the expense of support for research in Universities either through the research councils or HEFCE. A sound research infrastructure is essential for more exploitation of UK research. This can be achieved through intensifying co-operation between Innovate UK and the research councils and both parties planning ahead for successful exploitation. Catapult centres have already demonstrated the strong demand for more technology transfer and are contributing strongly to the growth of new technology in the UK. As recommended by the Hauser review more funding should be provided to allow the network to grow. The catapult network does not appear to be widely employed by SME s due to cost and complexity. For technology readiness level (TRL) 4 and above, Innovate UK grants are extremely effective provided that the scope is well defined. However, unlike EPSRC, Innovate UK does not have an open call for research proposals in any area which could disadvantage SME/university partnerships who may wish to pursue an idea developed on the EPSRC grant beyond TRL3. This requires further support to reach a stage where venture capital funding can be obtained. This would increase the range of ideas that are turned into products. 6. How can progress under the Industrial Strategy be harnessed to stimulate collaboration between businesses and researchers in the UK? Industrial strategy has been successful in in bringing together partners to address common sector problems. So far, it has provided an excellent framework to both formulate long-term roadmaps for technology development in particular areas and a means to deliver the goals identified for Aerospace and automotive and bioscience sectors. This success has been

5 achieved by universities playing a full role alongside businesses in delivering progress alongside public sector bodies. Government needs to continue to deliver in these areas and broaden this approach to others, e.g. rail and construction. There is a challenge for BIS to engage other Whitehall Departments who have a less strong tradition of engaging with new technology. Many other Departments lack expertise or budgets to follow through on needed initiatives; Innovate UK could help to deliver services as agent in managing technology programmes for these. The SBRI programme program also needs to be used more widely across Whitehall to engage business in delivering innovative solutions to public sector tasks. 7. Which models of collaboration have proved most successful for stimulating SME engagement with the research base in the UK? What additional action needs to be taken to strengthen UK performance in this area? Economic evaluations have demonstrated the positive impact of a number of Innovate UK s programs e.g smart/ SBRI innovation platforms. For many of these programmes (e.g. Smart) Innovate UK receives more good applications than it is able to fund and as such, increasing the funding for such schemes is required. When Innovate UK was set up, strong collaborations were established with the RDAs who facilitated access for local SMEs to national and EU support programmes. While some of this kind of activity has continued through the LEPS and other local delivery organisations, the coverage across England remains patchy. More needs to be done to simplify access for SMEs and encourage them to take up opportunities for innovation support. For many of these, the present support programme appears to be over complex, too bureaucratic and unhelpful. More attention needed to local support for innovation at city and regional level. LEPs can play a role in this but need to have sufficient resources and expertise to work effectively with local partners and reach out to local SMEs. MOD CDE has had some success in SME engagement with early stage defence research. Informal consortia led by organisations such as Innovate UK, research councils and the Science and Technologies Facilities Council (STFC) play a key role in supporting SME engagement with each other and larger companies. Defra LINK schemes were successful because they provided official industry experienced coordinators who were versed in funding policy and could provide early guidance to an industrial/ academic group who were considering a funding proposal. Harnessing expertise early allowed decisions to be made and mitigated loss of time on lower chance proposals. Guidance on the final stages of the application gave confidence to the industrial applicants and subsequent expert support during the project was also welcomed. This concept could be something that Innovate UK could help reinstate. 8. Which approaches/sectors/organisations in the UK or internationally would you identify as examples of good practice in business-university collaboration with the potential to be applied more widely? There are many examples of successful technology transfer in the UK. The IET co-sponsored a conference with the Big Innovation Centre in 2012 looking at the success factors of in international experience of intermediary technology organisations. The results of this work was written up in a report from the Big Innovation Centre Catapult to success be ambitious, bold and enterprising. see

6 While more attention has been paid to public sector innovation in recent years the results have so far been disappointing. One approach - which has been very successful in the USA for many years - has been to provide R&D grants to SMEs with new ideas for improving the delivery of public sector programmes. The UK versions of this programme - SBRI managed by Innovate UK has grown in the last few years but is still confined to too few Whitehall Departments. The Treasury should give a stronger lead to Departments to use this programme to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of public expenditure. The pharmaceutical, software, computing, IT and aerospace and transportation sectors appear to have more success due to their long term business nature, the size of the sector and the existence of a sizable academic population engaged in research. The situation for the vast number of SME s is less stable and should be addressed by engagement at an appropriate, long term level (at least 10 years). Short term strategies will not make sufficient impact across the economy as a whole. A voucher scheme which allocated funding to an SME for a short research study or access to specialised equipment would be useful and could help stimulate SME s to approach academic or research institutions. This could be issued purely on a competitive technical/ business merit. The funding available should be compatible in some measure with the needs of particular sectors and avoid obvious mismatches in some current schemes that demonstrate a lack of awareness of the field. The application process must be simple and clear with the applicants being kept fully aware of progress/ or otherwise on each step through the vetting process. An interactive review process would be helpful.