The Dowling Review of Business-University Research Collaborations by Professor Dame Ann Dowling, president of the Royal Academy of Engineering, looks at how the UK can grow the number of research partnerships between universities and businesses, in order to scale up the benefits delivered to both the participants in the collaboration and to the nation as a whole.
According to the report Government needs to simplify the plethora of schemes aiming to facilitate business-industry research collaboration across all disciplines. In her report, commissioned by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and compiled after regional meetings, workshops and over 210 written submissions of evidence from both academia and industry, Dowling says the complexity of the existing support mechanisms creates frustration and confusion and means the UK is not reaping the full potential of its opportunity to connect businesses - both domestic and international - with the excellent research being done in UK universities.
There are two approaches to streamlining the system, according to Dowling: reducing the overall number of schemes or simplifying the interface between the user and the scheme. She recommends that government does both. University technology transfer offices should also set targets focused on long-term gains to get the most from their intellectual property, including patents, rather than simply short-term financial gains. Attitudes are already changing in academia: the Research Excellence Framework now gives credit to the industrial impact of research, but this needs to go further. All academics should see and feel that their university supports and rewards industrial collaboration.
"We need a change of culture in our universities to support and encourage collaboration with industry," Dowling says. "In the UK we can be a bit dismissive about research that actually has an application, but in reality such use-inspired research can be truly excellent. Access to industry projects was cited very positively by the researchers we consulted - they want to be working on these challenging and interesting projects with demonstrable impact and excellent career prospects."
There is a gap in the market to encourage academia-industry research partnerships to grow, says the review, particularly in helping existing short-term, project-based collaborations to evolve into longer term partnerships focused on use-inspired research. The review proposes a new 'Awards for Collaborative Excellence' scheme that would provide pump-priming funds on a competitive basis to enable strong relationships between individuals in academia and industry to develop into group collaborations with critical mass, substantial industry funding and a long-term horizon.
Dowling believes such schemes would be likely to provide a good return on public investment. She points to an analysis conducted in 2013 of Innovate UK's collaborative R&D funding, which found business impacts to be twice as high for projects with two or more academic partners, at £9.67 gross value added (GVA) per pound spent, compared to projects without academic partners, at £4.22 GVA per pound.
"Solutions to everyday problems could be sitting in a lab right now, but without the conversation with industry they could be missed," she added. "It is vital that research students in appropriate disciplines spend some time in industry in order to get a new perspective on their own research, expand knowledge, and build relationships. They should also receive training, particularly around entrepreneurship."
People are at the heart of collaboration and the review recommends an incentive framework for universities and businesses to promote the transfer of ideas and people between business and academia. This includes supporting students to develop business awareness at an early stage of their research careers and recognising researchers who are successful collaborators in terms of career progression and research assessment.
"Business-university research collaboration is an important part of the innovation ecosystem, but innovation is a complex, non-linear activity," Dowling concluded. "This has resulted in a complex policy support mechanism for innovation that presents a barrier to business engagement, especially for small businesses. Government needs to take a systems view of these mechanisms in order to try and simplify the process as much as possible. "Government has a crucial role to play in creating the right conditions for effective collaboration between academia and industry. For example, HMRC and BIS could help by giving much clearer guidance to businesses on how best to use R&D tax credits and how these interplay with State Aid restrictions."
Felicity Burch, Senior Economist at EEF, believes collaboration between businesses and universities is highly valuable to Britain's future productivity as it increases the speed and effectiveness of innovation. "The Dowling Review offers a comprehensive set of recommendations to ease that process," she said. "While many manufacturers already work with universities, it is not always straightforward and the review is right to highlight the importance of sustaining key support mechanisms such as Catapult centres and Knowledge Transfer Partnerships.
"Our recent Innovation Monitor shows that 61% of manufacturers think that working with others is now more important for successful innovation than it was in the past. But while over half (53%) of innovative manufacturers collaborate with universities on innovation, this is not always easy and two in ten are concerned that their ability to partner effectively is poor.
"This is why the Dowling Review is important as it tackles some of the key concerns and sets out a blueprint for industry and universities to follow to ensure they get the best results from their partnerships and joint innovations."