Firms face barriers to Uni collaboration as Uni red tape gets in the way
Businesses are finding it more difficult to collaborate with universities despite a wave of government initiatives designed to increase interaction, according to a study by the Advanced Institute of Management Research at Imperial College Business School based in London.
Interest in university-industry collaboration has increased in academia and government in recent years. Many policy initiatives, including the University Challenge Fund, the Science Enterprise Challenge and the Higher Education Innovation Fund have been designed to increase the value of these interactions.
But the informal relationships between scholars and business people have increasingly come under scrutiny and oversight by university administration. Universities' officials, sometimes Technology Transfer Offices (TTO), are increasingly seeking to capture the value of intellectual property (IP) related to research projects and, according to businesses responding to study, they may have unrealistic expectations about the economic value of the work they are now mediating.
"There is a perception in industry of a rising tide of university red tape," said Dr Ammon Salter, a co-author of the report.
Over half of the respondents (55%) blamed administration and regulations, including confidentiality, the ownership and value of IP for limiting their collaboration with universities. Half (49%) felt universities consistently overvalued IP.
Although only a modest share of UK firms work directly with universities, these interactions have a considerable economic impact. Almost a quarter of firms that took part in the study rely on university research for more than 40% of their innovation projects. Universities are most valuable as a source of ideas and talent rather than a cheap way of outsourcing R & D activities.
"The study shows that UK universities provide a rich pool of talent for firms to draw upon and that interactions between universities and industry are making a critical impact to economic development, which is why the rising level of barriers to these interactions is so troubling," says Pablo D'Este of the Cranfield School of Management, a co-author of the research.
The study highlights other developments that may further contribute to this situation:
• The 2008 Research Assessment Exercise may have made researchers more long-term oriented in their research and therefore less interested in collaboration with industry.
• Universities have created stricter regulations to govern the research conduct of their staff.
• Full Economic Costing in the university sector may have increased the cost to industry of engaging with university partners.
The study argues that if government efforts to promote collaboration are to be successful, they need to reflect the wide variety of collaboration modes between industry and universities. The research offers several routes towards developing more effective policies.
"We need to recognise that the benefits of successful, high-quality university collaboration are broader than IP alone," said Dr Salter. "Incentives and targets for universities need to encourage a broad range of relationships between business and universities. Focusing on university patenting and licensing income may distract us from other more economically-important forms of interaction."
